Analysis of Macro-Diversity in LTE-Advanced

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission / reception is being studied in LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) for future evolution of 3GPP LTE. Support of soft handover is essential for improving the performance of cell edge users. This paper evaluates the soft handover gain in LTE-A downlink. Reference signal received power (RSVP) is used to define the triggers and the measurements for soft handover. Pathloss, intracell and inter-cell interference are modeled and are taken into account for the calculation of handover gain. Mathematical analysis in terms of SINR gain and HO margin between soft handover and hard handover is performed in a CoMP set.