Impact of Non-Typical Antenna Configurations on Higher Order Sectored Sites in Ultra Dense Networks

The site densification and higher order sectorization are the two well-known possible ways of increasing the system capacity. However, to take the full advantage of these techniques they should be implemented with optimum antenna configuration. The target of this paper is to highlight the gain of using an optimized antenna configuration for 3-, and 6-sector sites in achieving a better quality (SINR) and capacity. Generally, a 3-sector site is deployed with 65° HPBW antenna; however, it was observed that for ultra-dense networks i.e. 100 m to 250 m ISD distance 3-sector site gives better result with 32° HPBW antenna. Similarly, performance of 6-sector site was found better with 16° HPBW antenna at small ISDs, whereas at large intersite distances the 32° HPBW antenna was found to be a preferred choice. It was observed that spectral efficiency of the cell degrades with site densification and higher order sectorization, but the overall capacity of a system improves due to more number of sectors and cells.