QoS improvement strategies for macrocell edge users using femtocells

Providing Quality of Service (QoS) to users is a main challenge for a cellular network operator. Users located at macrocell edge experience relatively weaker signals from their serving Base Station (BS) and greater levels of interference from neighboring BSs. Therefore QoS provisions for such users are much harder to achieve. We propose and discuss some strategies which involve open access femtocell deployment to aid the macrocell edge users in achieving their performance objectives. These femtocells can be deployed in various configurations near the macrocell edge. The macrocell edge users can then communicate through the nearby femtocell. We also discuss the situation when BS and femtocell cooperatively communicate with the macrocell edge user. We investigate the performance of these deployment strategies through simulations.