High-order modulation for small cell networks: A high level analysis

Emerging wireless communication transmission technologies, such as small cell networks, continue to improve receive signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SNR) in a cellular system such as the LTE. It has come to the point that 64 QAM, the modulation order that is believed to be sufficient for a cellular system, seems to be no longer enough in order to convert the SNR advantage to an actual spectral efficiency and benefit from it. This article analyzes the feasibility and potential performance gain of the 256 QAM modulation scheme in an LTE small cell network when taking transceiver hardware limitation and scheduling signaling overhead into consideration. The discussion pertains to LTE, but it applies to any other wireless communication system as well.