A femtocell location strategy for improving adaptive traffic sharing in heterogeneous LTE networks

Femtocells have been suggested as a promising solution for the provision of indoor coverage and capacity. In this paper, a new planning strategy for placing femtocell access points so as to make the most of automatic traffic sharing algorithms is proposed for a long-term evolution (LTE) heterogeneous network. The aim of the proposed method is to increase overlapping between femtocells by increasing the percentage of area with low dominance of the serving femtocell. Method assessment is carried out by simulating classical traffic sharing algorithms in a three-dimensional office scenario with femtocell location plans designed based on different network performance criteria. Results show that location plans with a larger low dominance ratio achieve better network performance after sharing traffic than plans designed for maximum coverage or connection quality.