Achievable system performance gains using distributed antenna deployments

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) using distributed antenna systems (DASs) have emerged as a promising candidate for future wireless cellular networks. In general by employing a DAS one places more remote radio units (RRUs) in a cell with one or more antennas to enhance coverage and capacity. These RRUs are connected to a central base band unit (BBU) via a high capacity and low latency connection. This paper shows achievable performance gains by deploying a DAS while keeping the number of transmit antennas the same as in a centralized antenna system (CAS). The proposed DAS architecture is an extension of a standard long term evolution (LTE) deployment. Performance evaluation is carried out by extensive system level simulations.