Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

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Capacity and Coverage Enhancement in Heterogeneous Networks

Shilpa Talwar,1 Shu-ping Yeh,1 Nageen Himayat,1 Kerstin Johnsson,1 Geng Wu,1 and Rose Qingyang Hu2

1Intel Corporation, USA

2Utah State University, USA

The exponential growth in mobile traffic due the introduction of sophisticated client devices (e.g., smartphones, notebooks, tablets) into the market is driving up traffic load and straining the capacity of current wireless networks. At the same time, network providers face the challenge of meeting this demand with relatively flat revenues per bit. Radical innovations in mobile broadband system design will be required to deliver the projected capacity demand in a cost-effective manner. Heterogeneous multi-tier network architecture is one of the most promising paradigms to offer a significant areal capacity gain and indoor coverage improvement at low cost. We describe a heterogeneous network architecture composed of a hierarchy of tiers (that is footprints), multiple types of infrastructure elements and one or more radio access technologies. Together, these network elements address a multitude of capacity, coverage and quality of service concerns. Of particular importance are the scenarios of single-frequency multi-tier deployment and multi-radio multi-tier deployment, since they offer the highest capacity at a relatively low cost. As a result, we focus on these use cases, outlining the challenges and presenting some promising interference mitigation solutions. This chapter ...