Virtual layer technology for Ultra-Dense Networks

Ultra-Dense Networks (UDN) with network densification are regarded as one of the key technologies to meet the requirements of ultra-high traffic volume density in 5G. However, the increase of deployment density will pose significant challenges, such as the inter-cell interference and mobility management. The virtual layer technology is promising to address these challenges. In this paper, the system design of the virtual layer technology is given. To evaluate the performance of the virtual layer technology, a field experiment is carried out and a further system-level simulation experiment based on the output of the field experiment is conducted. Both the field experiment and simulation experiment show that the virtual layer technology can achieve a significant gain in terms of both average cell spectral efficiency and cell edge spectral efficiency, while reducing the handover frequency and handover failure rate.