Microcell performance evaluation in IS-95 based CDMA networks

A practical CDMA microcell structure is systematically studied on both forward link and reverse link. The embedded microcell shares the same frequency and has full connectivity with the overlaying macrocell. The capacity of microcell and macrocell are derived and simulated at various traffic distributions. The microcell capacity is 1.03 to 1.12 times that of a regular cell. The capacity of the combined microcell and macrocell is 2.00 to 2.11 times that of a regular cell. The microcell and macrocell performance are also analyzed in terms of RF reliability, soft hand-off factors, interference and power levels. The macrocell RF reliability will degrade more seriously than that of the microcell. The radio hand-off factors of the microcell are about 11% higher than that of the macrocell. The average required forward traffic channel power of the microcell is about 10% less than that of the macrocell. The results show that embedding the microcell in an existing CDMA network could be a very efficient way to improve hot-spot capacity and dead-spot coverage.