Characterizing the Effects of Rapid LTE Deployment: A Data-Driven Analysis

The deployment of LTE, while old news to developed countries, is ongoing in developing countries with some starting LTE deployments only a year ago. LTE is essential for developing countries where broadband access is mostly available through wireless connection. The process of LTE deployment is costly and time consuming. Network operators attempt to minimize both overheads. With the current challenges facing network operators to acquire new sites, 4G deployment always depends on reusing the already existing 2G/3G macro layer. In this paper, we study the approach of rapid 4G deployment by analyzing data from a major network operator in a developing country. In particular, we look at network measurements from a single large cluster right after LTE deployment. We analyze the impact of the deployment approach on user throughput and find that LTE throughput could be improved further for the majority of LTE users in more than 50% of the studied cells by improving either interference or coverage. We find that this is mainly because the LTE system is more sensitive to interference when compared to 3G. Finally, we show a data-driven approach to detect the affected cells and mitigate the issue through physical optimization, this approach balances employed LTE transition best practices with cost efficiency and rapid deployment.