Impact of Macrocellular Network Densification on the Capacity, Energy and Cost Efficiency in Dense Urban Environment

Abstract

This paper aims to show the effect of macrocellular network densification on the capacity, energy and cost efficiency. The presented results are based on radio propagation simulations that consider macrocellular network with different inter-site distances, i.e. different site densities, and also take into account the presence of indoor receiver points by varying outdoor and indoor receiver distribution. It is observed that as a result of densifying the network, the cell spectral efficiency reduces due to increasing level of inter-cell interference. However, as a result of densification, the network area capacity can be improved since the area spectral efficiency increases. Nevertheless, the densification efficiency decreases because of the reduction of cell spectral efficiency, especially when indoor receiver points are taken into account. The results hence indicate that densification of macrocellular network suffers from inefficiency which results in higher energy and cost per bit per Hertz, and thus calls for alternative methods to deploy networks, or alternatively, more sophisticated methods, such as base station coordination or inter-cell interference cancellation techniques, to be implemented for future cellular networks.