Cell Range Expansion (CRE)

The intention of the Pico Cells is to offload traffic from the Macro cells to increase the system capacity. As a result, when Macro cell becomes overloaded, it would make sense to offload the MUE’s in the vicinity of the Pico cell to it. This can/should be done even if the UE is receiving a better signal from the Macro cell. The expansion of the range of the Pico cell is termed as CRE or Cell Range expansion.

To make sure that the UE does not fail in the handover process, the Time domain ICIC should be used and Macro cell should use ABS. The UE’s can be configured to do measurements on the Pico when the Macro is using ABS. The MUE now reports the Measurement reports to the Macro and are handed over to the Pico to act as PUE.