Interplay between cost, capacity and power consumption in heterogeneous mobile networks

Mobile operators nowadays tend to deploy dense heterogeneous layers of 3G and 4G networks in outdoor and indoor environments by adding more macrocells and small cells (e.g. microcells, picocells and femtocells) in response to the increasing demand for coverage and capacity. Another main driver and enabler behind this tendency is the phenomenon that around 80% of power consumption in mobile communication networks stems from the radio base stations. This situation makes mobile operators opt for the use of low-power radio base stations to provide better coverage, capacity and an environmentally-friendly operation. In this paper the interplay between the deployment costs, targeted QoS and power consumptions have been studied considering two deployment options for the provisioning of the required mobile broadband coverage and capacity; namely the heterogeneous network (HetNet) option versus the homogenous macrocell deployment option. The main findings indicate that, the perceived saving in the total cost of ownership (TCO) resulting from offloading percentage of network traffic to indoor smallcell, in the case of HetNet, is bounded by the mobile subscriber density per area, their usage patterns, the adopted backhaul solution and the used spectrum resources. In general, a quite paying cost and power saving can be achieved by the heterogonous deployment solution for scenarios with high demand levels especially when there is a need to use the spectrum resources more efficiently.