Effect of measurement bandwidth to the accuracy of inter-frequency RSRP measurements in LTE

In this paper we study the effect of reference signal received power (RSRP) measurement bandwidth on the accuracy of handovers and the UTRAN Long Term Evolution (LTE) system performance. In 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) it has been agreed that inter-frequency RSRP measurement requirements would be developed assuming 6 middle physical resource blocks measurement bandwidth, which has also been agreed to be used for developing intra-frequency RSRP measurement requirements. Wider handover measurement bandwidth could potentially provide better averaging against fading and thus, reduce the time required for performing inter-frequency handover measurements. These studies are conducted with fully dynamic time-driven system simulator and simulations are done with different RSRP measurement bandwidths and different filters. Based on these studies wider bandwidth provides only minor improvement in measurement accuracy and it does not clearly reduce the time required for performing measurements.