3D coverage analysis of LTE urban heterogeneous networks with dense femtocell deployments

Femtocell technology recently gained attention due to its potential benefits for mobile operators (significant capacity offload and extension of the coverage at low cost) but there are still hard technical challenges to be addressed (e.g., the optimization of the interference management). Furthermore, the deployment strategies are still in question, such as the femtocell access-mode (open or closed) and the spectrum usage to adopt. Consequently, reliable simulations are necessary in the perspective of massive femtocell deployments, in particular for characterization of the impact on the coverage quality. An original solution is introduced and exploited in this article. It offers two complementary approaches for two different applications: a synthetic model for realization of small-scale or illustrative case studies and a real model for realistic and large-scale heterogeneous network performance evaluation. It relies on a suite of simulation tools including the generation of random 3D femtocell deployments in synthetic or real environments; realistic pathloss predictions; and a 3D downlink coverage performance analysis (i.e., considering all floors) of long-term evolution heterogeneous networks. A first study shows not only a large improvement of coverage quality for femtocell users, but also a very significant degradation for non-subscribers in the vicinity of closed-access femtocells. The femtocells have a strong impact locally (gain or degradation depending on the access-mode and user type) and not only at their own floor. Therefore, a 3D evaluation is relevant. Then, a second study offers realistic and large-scale analyses of the coverage evolution after corporate femtocells have massively been deployed in urban macrocells. The results show a moderate impact on the average spectral efficiencies but a strong impact locally. In this study, closed-access femtocells cause dead zones for non-subscribers in 15% of indoor areas leading to non-uniform service coverage, whereas they increase the spectral efficiency of femtocell subscribers (by 1.5 bps/Hz in 20% of indoor areas). These are critical information for a mobile operator since the experience of its customers is much affected by the femtocell deployment and by the selected access mode.