This paper analyzes the efficacy of decoupled wireless access in a two-tier heterogeneous network. The decoupled wireless access and its performance benefits have been studied in different scenarios recently. In this paper, an in-depth analysis on its efficacy from spectral efficiency perspective is provided. To achieve this task, (i) new closed form expressions for probability of association of user equipment with different tiers employing different frequency bands (i.e., microwave and millimeter wave) with different pathloss exponents are derived using univariate Fox's H-functions; (ii) Distributions of the distance to the serving base stations are also derived; (iii) Exact expressions of spectral efficiency for different association cases are further obtained using bivariate Fox's H-functions. Furthermore, rigorous simulation results are provided which validate the aforementioned analytical results. In addition to that, a detailed discussion on the decoupling gain of decoupled wireless access and its efficacy is also provided. Lastly, despite the improvement provided by the decoupled wireless access, which is evident from the results presented in this paper, few questions are raised on its pragmatic value.
The idea of multi-tier cellular system is not new and it has been under the lens of both academia and industry for a long time. For example, authors in @cite_1 investigated the case of two-tier cellular systems with universal frequency reuse. They study the case of single user (SU) and multi-user (MU) multiple antenna methods to mitigate cross-tier interference and the ‘near-far’ deadspot coverage in a two tier network. They further provided location-assisted power control scheme for regulating femtocell BSs transmit powers.
@cite_1
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In two-tier networks comprising a conventional cellular network overlaid with shorter range hotspots (e.g. femtocells, distributed antennas, or wired relays) with universal frequency reuse, the near-far effect from cross-tier interference creates dead spots where reliable coverage cannot be guaranteed to users in either tier. Equipping the macrocell and femtocells with multiple antennas enhances robustness against the near-far problem. This work derives the maximum number of simultaneously transmitting multiple antenna femtocells meeting a per-tier outage probability constraint. Coverage dead zones are presented wherein cross-tier interference bottlenecks cellular and femtocell coverage. Two operating regimes are shown namely 1) a cellular-limited regime in which femtocell users experience unacceptable cross-tier interference and 2) a hotspot-limited regime wherein both femtocell users and cellular users are limited by hotspot interference. Our analysis accounts for the per-tier transmit powers, the number of transmit antennas (single antenna transmission being a special case) and terrestrial propagation such as the Rayleigh fading and the path loss exponents. Single-user (SU) multiple antenna transmission at each tier is shown to provide significantly superior coverage and spatial reuse relative to multiuser (MU) transmission. We propose a decentralized carrier-sensing approach to regulate femtocell transmission powers based on their location. Considering a worst-case cell-edge location, simulations using typical path loss scenarios show that our interference management strategy provides reliable cellular coverage with about 60 femtocells per cell-site. Heterogeneous networks consisting of small cells (e.g. femtocells) are capable of achieving high capacity and improving indoor cellular coverage area, while the fractional frequency reuse (FFR) scheme has been proposed for upcoming and future cellular systems to improve spectral efficiency in cellular OFDM networks. In two-tier networks of macrocells layered with femtocells, the resource allocation will most likely be sharing the same licensed spectrum. In this paper, we formulate a simple femtocells resource allocation strategies that allows a femtocells base station (FBS) to allocate more resources (co-channel) in high usage areas such as commercial FBS (cFBS) and orthogonal resource allocation for randomly deployed home user FBS (hFBS). We analyze our strategy in a multi-cell systems using area spectral efficiency (ASE) in composite fading consisting of Nakagami-m fading, path-loss and log-normal shadowing. Analytical and simulation results show that our simple resource allocation strategies are able to reduce inter-tier interferences and to offer an improvement in the overall spectral efficiency of the two-tier systems. Two-tier femtocell networks- comprising a conventional cellular network plus embedded femtocell hotspots- offer an economically viable solution to achieving high cellular user capacity and improved coverage. With universal frequency reuse and DS-CDMA transmission however, the ensuing cross-tier interference causes unacceptable outage probability. This paper develops an uplink capacity analysis and interference avoidance strategy in such a two-tier CDMA network. We evaluate a network-wide area spectral efficiency metric called the operating contour (OC) defined as the feasible combinations of the average number of active macrocell users and femtocell base stations (BS) per cell-site that satisfy a target outage constraint. The capacity analysis provides an accurate characterization of the uplink outage probability, accounting for power control, path loss and shadowing effects. Considering worst case interference at a corner femtocell, results reveal that interference avoidance through a time-hopped CDMA physical layer and sectorized antennas allows about a 7x higher femtocell density, relative to a split spectrum two-tier network with omnidirectional femtocell antennas. A femtocell exclusion region and a tier selection based handoff policy offers modest improvements in the OCs. These results provide guidelines for the design of robust shared spectrum two-tier networks. Two-tier networks, comprising a conventional cellular network overlaid with shorter range hotspots (e.g. femtocells, distributed antennas, or wired relays), offer an economically viable way to improve cellular system capacity. The capacity-limiting factor in such networks is interference. The cross-tier interference between macrocells and femtocells can suffocate the capacity due to the near-far problem, so in practice hotspots should use a different frequency channel than the potentially nearby high-power macrocell users. Centralized or coordinated frequency planning, which is difficult and inefficient even in conventional cellular networks, is all but impossible in a two-tier network. This paper proposes and analyzes an optimum decentralized spectrum allocation policy for two-tier networks that employ frequency division multiple access (including OFDMA). The proposed allocation is optimal in terms of area spectral efficiency (ASE), and is subjected to a sensible quality of service (QoS) requirement, which guarantees that both macrocell and femtocell users attain at least a prescribed data rate. Results show the dependence of this allocation on the QoS requirement, hotspot density and the co-channel interference from the macrocell and femtocells. Design interpretations are provided.