Adaptive cell sizing in cellular networks

This paper investigates the potential capacity improvements made possible through the use of dynamic cell sizing in a cellular network. The purpose of dynamic cell sizing is to reduce cell radii and thus enable in-cell users to increase their transmit powers. The use of higher transmit powers suppresses intercell interference and leads to an overall increase in capacity. This paper discusses the degree of capacity enhancement that can be achieved in this manner. The analysis indicates that the capacity of a single cell can be increased by as much as 38%. However, under uniform traffic conditions, this results in a ratio of supported-to-offered traffic of just 0.2, which is clearly unsatisfactory. Dynamic cell sizing performs significantly better in hot-spot conditions, where the in-cell traffic follows a normal distribution with the highest density close to a central basestation. The ratio of supported-to-offered traffic under these conditions was found to rise to a more acceptable 0.7-0.8 depending on the traffic standard deviation.