of eICIC at low offered load. The gain of eICIC increases with offered load. Highest gain achieved at full load condition (interference limited) Figure 7.11 Summary of eICIC performance determining factors LTE Small Cell Optimization Picos Macro Muting in one Macro macro cell Pico 1 Benefit in Pico 2 multiple small Pico 3 cells Pico 4 Figure 7.12 eICIC gain in case of multiple small cells configured as ABS. The former illustrates the importance of coherent load balancing (e.g. via pico cell RE setting) and ABS configuration at the macros to maximize the benefits of applying eICIC. Figures 7.13 and 7.14 show the performance with/without eICIC in terms of the 5-percentile and 50-percentile end-user-experienced throughput versus the offered load per macro cell area. These performance results are obtained for the 3GPP Release 12 small cell scenario 1 as defined in [7]. The scenario consists of a regular grid of three-sector macro cells with 500 meters inter-site distance and random placement of small cell clusters within each macro cell No eICIC eICIC Average offered load (Mbps) Figure 7.13 5-percentile end-user throughput with and without eICIC Small Cell Interference Management No eICIC eICIC Average offered load (Mbps) Figure 7.14 50-percentile (median) end-user throughput with and without eICIC area. One cluster of four pico cells is assumed for each macro cell area. The radio propagation follows the ITU Urban Macro (UMa) and Urban Micro (UMi) models, which include different characteristics for line-of-sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS). The transmit power for the macro cells equals 46 dBm, while the picos transmit with 30 dBm. A dynamic birth-death traffic model is used, where new calls are generated according to a Poisson arrival process. The payload for each user equals 4 Mbit, and once it has been successfully delivered to the user, the call is terminated. The UEs are Release 11 compliant, supporting both CRS IC and configuration of RRM and CSI measurement restrictions. Transmission mode (TM) 4 is assumed with 2 