Dynamic Beamforming for Three-Dimensional MIMO Technique in LTE-Advanced Networks

MIMO system with large number of antennas, referred to as large MIMO or massive MIMO, has drawn increased attention as they enable significant throughput and coverage improvement in LTE-Advanced networks. However, deploying huge number of antennas in both transmitters and receivers was a great challenge in the past few years. Three-dimensional MIMO (3D MIMO) is introduced as a promising technique in massive MIMO networks to enhance the cellular performance by deploying antenna elements in both horizontal and vertical dimensions. Radio propagation of user equipments (UE) is considered only in horizontal domain by applying 2D beamforming. In this paper, a dynamic beamforming algorithm is proposed where vertical domain of antenna is fully considered and beamforming vector can be obtained according to UEs’ horizontal and vertical directions. Compared with the conventional 2D beamforming algorithm, throughput of cell edge UEs and cell center UEs can be improved by the proposed algorithm. System level simulation is performed to evaluate the proposed algorithm. In addition, the impacts of downtilt and intersite distance (ISD) on spectral efficiency and cell coverage are explored.