Smart femto-cell controller based distributed cognitive pilot channel

This paper presents an extension of the Cognitive Pilot Channel (CPC) concept to the case of a distributed version thereof (namely, DCPC), and demonstrates a potential instantiation of this concept in the design of Smart Femto-Cell Controllers (SFC-C) for handling the management of co-existing homogeneous or heterogeneous networks. Instead of covering the various networks by a single CPC, the novel idea consists in deploying the CPC transmission in a distributed way within each of the individual Smart Femto Cell (SFC) controlled Composite Networks (CNs), an example of which can be a heterogeneous home or business deployment including the collection of a Femto- Cell Base Station (FC-BS), a Wireless LAN (WLAN) Access Point (AP), a ZigBee network controller, a Bluetooth network controller, etc. A typical implementation of this concept leads to an integration of the DCPC transmitter into a SFC which consists of the FC-BS for provision of cellular access and the SFC-C for network management and DCPC provision. In this case, the SFC owner is able to manage the attached composite network by providing suitable context and policy information within the DCPC. The paper furthermore introduces intra-network and inter-network interference scenarios and explains how the DCPC concept allows the introduction of corresponding interference management mechanisms.