Evaluation and comparison of capacities and costs of Multihop Cellular Networks

Multihop cellular networks (MCN) have emerged as promising solution to cope with the time persistent problem of poor cell edge and indoor coverage offered by conventional cellular networks (CCN). Furthermore, having potential to increase system throughput and performance while decreasing deployment cost, MCN are being envisioned as essential part of future broadband networks. In prospective of these futuristic trends, this paper addresses the dire need to assess different MCN architecture options and quantify the gains they offer in terms of capacity, performance and system cost compared to CCN. As the first standard for MCN i.e. 802.16j is on the way yet, this paper relies on the most well known example of CCN i.e. GSM to demonstrate the concepts in this study and evaluates the realistic capacity and performance of three different architectural options for MCN. These are : 1) MCN without spectrum sharing between base station (BS) to relay stations (RS) and RS to mobile station (MS) links. 2) MCN with spectrum sharing between BS-RS and RS-MS links, and 3) MCN without out spectrum sharing while BS's acting as umbrella cells on top of RS's. Results show the MCN, depending on the their configuration, in addition to improved grade of service (GoS) can yield 34% to 170% higher system capacity for a 50 to 67% more system cost compared to an optimised CCN.