On femto deployment architectures and macrocell offloading benefits in joint macro-femto deployments

This article provides an overview of opportunities and challenges related to joint deployments of macro and femtocells. It provides insights on possible deployment architectures for femtocells along with an analysis framework for quantifying macro offloading benefits in realistic network deployment scenarios by means of advanced performance analysis techniques. Such benefits include potential enhancement in quality of radio signals for users served by the macro network in joint macro-femto deployments. This in turn translates into potentially better data rates (throughput) for macrocell users and may offer the possibility of adding more users to the macro network while preserving the network configuration -- resulting in direct capital expenditure savings. The approach taken in this article consists of creating a framework for quantifying macro offloading benefits in joint macro-femto deployments. A baseline configuration where all users (indoor and outdoor) are served by a traditional macro network (state-of-the-art macro only network) is considered first. The analysis is followed through joint macro-femto deployments, where femtocells serve indoor users. Through comparison of the baseline configuration and the joint macro-femto analysis, we quantify the benefits of the joint macro-femto deployment.