Small Cell Network and its Architectures

With networks continuously evolving, requirements for spectrum and higher data rates are increasing exponentially. Deployment of small cells helps cater to these requirements. Small cell networks give higher capacity and improved coverage for homes, enterprises, metropolitan cities and rural public spaces with existing core networks. It works in a licensed spectrum and has a range of 10 meter to few kilometers. According to the capacity and coverage area, the technologies are defined as a macrocell, microcell, picocell, and femtocell. In this paper, main features of small cells are considered and listed. Various deployments of small cells are classified according to the deployment scenarios and deployment aspects. For successful deployment of small cells, the number of issues and challenges have also been considered and reviewed. The general small cell architecture has also been discussed in this paper. Many other small cell architectures have also been compared on the basis of deployment scenarios, advantages and disadvantages.