Performance Comparison of Small Cell and Distributed Antenna Systems for In-Building Mobile Communications

To bring fifth generation (5G) mobile communication capabilities to indoor users, small cells and distributed antenna systems are two promising technologies being considered. This paper investigates and compares the performance of indoor deployed small cell base station (SBS) and indoor distributed antenna systems (DAS) in an isolated multi-storey building. Each floor of the building is equipped with either an indoor SBS or an indoor DAS where geographically distributed remote radio heads (RRHs) are connected to a central unit (CU), and frequency reuse is employed among floors. Signal propagation characteristics within multi-storey buildings and the impact of inter floor interference on performance is analysed and compared for both systems. The effect of different reuse distances, pathloss exponents, penetration loss and co-channel interference on achievable rate is analysed over a wide range of potential mobile equipment (ME) locations.