Network Densification Impact on System Capacity

With the tremendous growth of smartphone penetration, the demand for increased capacity in cellular networks has escalated. The trend is predicted to continue for years to come. One common way to cope with the ever increasing capacity demand is to add cells and densify the networks. Network densification was used before the introduction of LTE and Heterogeneous Networks, and will be even more emphasized with the introduction of 5G, where higher frequency bands with more challenging propagation characteristics, will be utilized. This study shows that in a confined geographical area with a fixed number of users, the user bit rate always increases with network densification. It is also shown that the capacity increase slows down with an increased number of cells, due to the increasing interference from the additional cells. Also, if the path loss exponent increases with distance, a reduced distance between cells reduces the capacity increase.