The effect of narrowbeam antenna and multiple tiers on system capacity in CDMA wireless local loop

The wireless local loop (WLL) system is a local telephone system without wireline connection. It is believed to be a fast and cost-effective means to provide local phone service in rural areas and third world countries. WLL is a fixed radio communication system; narrowbeam antennas can be employed at both the base station and subscriber's side at high spots so that the propagation between base station and house is very close to free space propagation. This gives the WLL system many inherent advantages over the traditional cellular system, such as bigger coverage area, low power, reduced interference, higher capacity, no fast fading, and no handoff. In this article ideal multiple-tier hexagonal cells are used to derive the capacity of a CDMA WLL system. First, the reverse link interference from each tier to the center cell is calculated separately. Then, the interference ratio of reverse links in a WLL system is analytically derived as a function of total tier number. The result shows that interference from other cells is proportional to the beam width of the house antenna. The authors also found that tier number plays a vital role in system capacity in a free-space propagation (20 dB/dec) environment. At the extreme, the system capacity will drop to zero for an infinite-tier cell structure. A WLL simulator is also built to verify the authors' analytical solution.