Carrier Aggregation (CA) is one of the key features introduced in LTE Release 10 to achieve higher levels of throughput. Two or more component carriers (CCs) are aggregated and user equipments (UEs) simultaneously transmit in more than one. The use of non-contiguous resource allocation in the uplink (UL) implies higher peak to average power ratio, so power de-rating is essential to avoid inter-modulation distortion and adjacent channel leakage-power ratio. CC selection is a key radio resource management procedure by which the eNB assigns UEs to CCs. While most CC selection algorithms deal with downlink, existing literature lacks efforts on UL CA. Moreover the mechanism is determinant on the UL performance. Given the UE power limitation, different criteria must be used in each link. This work proposes a novel CC selection algorithm that distinguishes between power limited and non-power limited UEs. In particular it is proposed to introduce information on maximum power reduction in selection decisions. Besides, UEs are not directly rejected if they are power limited, an acceptance margin is defined. This contains information on throughput variations between the allocation in several or just one CCs. This novel approach is contrasted with other CC selection techniques. Results show cell edge throughput improvements and the benefit of allowing bandwidth aggregation in a subset of power limited users.

Peer Reviewed