A Techno-economic Analysis of Simulation-based 5G Femtocell Implementation at ITERA

In line with the rapid evolution of cellular communication technology, there is a high demand for data traffic required by the mobile users. The 5G technology is considered as the solution that can provide data rates up to 10 GB/s to meet such a high data traffic demand with millimeter wave utilization. Indonesia, with its large amount of mobile users, and Sumatera Institute of Technology (ITERA), as an accelerator of technology enhancement in western Indonesia, necessarily need good preparation in the implementation of commercial 5G technology. In this work, we investigate suitable network dimension scenarios to achieve the targeted data rates according to the 5G standards. By using the projected number of mobile communication users in ITERA and daily data traffic demand, several network dimension scenarios and femtocell network parameters are simulated to attain mobile users' data rates. The network dimension scenarios are then analyzed in terms of deployment cost. By analyzing the network dimensions from a techno-economic perspective, the most effective and efficient scenario is selected. The results of this research can bring an insight in network planning when deploying 5G mobile communications infrastructure at ITERA.