Numerical Evaluation and Monte Carlo Simulation for Performance Analysis of 4G LTE Networks

Abstract

Two main and fundamental key performance indicators which have been used to evaluate the performance of the wireless communication systems are the Bit Error Rate (BER), and the data throughput or its related channel capacity bound. For a system using one antenna at the transmitter and one antenna at the receiver and in non fading AWGN channel, the evaluation of the BER for most of the known modulation schemes is well known. Using more antennas at the transmitter and at the receiver and also in more realistic fading channel models, such as Rayleigh, Rician and Nakagami, the evaluation becomes more complex and necessitates the use and the development of advanced mathematical tools. In this context, the theory of BER evaluation had experienced an important evolution during the past decade. Initially, the evaluation of the BER performance was based on a classical approach where the Gaussian Q-function (also known as Gaussian Probability Integral) was used. Instead of using the alternative representation of the Gaussian Q-function, the Marcum Q-function was used to derive an approximate expression of BER analysis of Alamouti-MRC scheme with imperfect channel state information in Rician fading channel. In LTE, the BER is mainly evaluated by simulation and to the best of our knowledge, the BER analysis is rarely treated in the literature. One of our goal is to develop in this thesis some closed form expressions of the BER for the main MIMO schemes as used in LTE. To study the performance of LTE systems, a MATLAB based downlink physical layer simulator for Link Level Simulation (LLS) has been developed. A System Level Simulation of the Simulator is also available. The main goal of this proposed research work is to provide accurate BER analysis for different modulation schemes and their comprehensive comparison adopted in LTE networks