Impact of Base Station Cooperation on Cell Planning

• Published in: EURASIP journal on wireless communications and networking Vol. 2010; no. 1
• Main Authors: Garcia, IanDexter, Kusashima, Naoki, Sakaguchi, Kei, Araki, Kiyomichi, Kaneko, Shoji, Kishi, Yoji
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cham Springer International Publishing 01.01.2010; Springer Nature B.V; SpringerOpen
• Subjects: Cellular communication; Communications Engineering; Cooperation; Dynamics; Efficiency; Engineering; Gain; Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Interference; Interference Management in Wireless Communication Systems: Theory and Applications; Networks; Numerical control; Ratios; Research Article; Signal,Image and Speech Processing; Stations; Wireless communication; Wireless communications; Wireless networks; Plan Parameter; Methodical Selection; Cellular Network; Radio Access; Full Article
• ISSN: 1687-1499; 1687-1472; 1687-1499
• DOI: 10.1155/2010/406749

Base station cooperation (BSC) has been identified as a key radio access technology for next-generation cellular networks such as LTE-Advanced. BSC impacts cell planning, which is the methodical selection of base station (BS) sites, and BS equipment configuration for cost-effective cellular networks. In this paper, the impact of BSC on cell plan parameters (coverage, traffic, handover, and cost), as well as additional cell planning steps required for BSC are discussed. Results show that BSC maximizes its gains over noncooperation (NC) in a network wherein interference from cooperating BSs is the main limitation. Locations exist where NC may produce higher throughputs, therefore dynamic or semistatic switching between BSC and NC, called fractional BSC, is recommended. Because of interference from noncooperating BSs, the gains of BSC over NC are upper bounded, and diminishes at greater intersite distances because of noise. This encourages smaller cell sizes, higher transmit powers, and dynamic clustering of cooperative BSs.