Reliability and survivability assessment of LTE-A architecture and networks

In the world of broadband network, Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) is facing a large demand due to its high-speed wireless data transmission, extensive coverage from base stations, and a luxury of upgrading protocol software. However, its efficiency depends mainly on the two significant attributes which are reliability and survivability. Further, the prospects of these attributes are mainly based on the LTE architecture and network. In this paper, a hierarchical model is developed based on the architecture of LTE-A networks. Stochastic modeling techniques such as continuous time Markov chains and reliability block diagram are used to obtain reliability, availability and survivability metrics. Further, these metrics are analyzed numerically using the hierarchical model.