Simulator for the analysis of the mutual impact between indoor femtocells and urban macrocells

The provision of broadband wireless access inside buildings is getting more and more important. In order to achieve a cost-efficient solution for the improved coverage inside buildings, the network operators expect the deployment of a large number of femtocells in the homes of their customers. However, these femtocells interact with the surrounding mobile cellular network as they operate in a licensed spectrum. Due to the mutual interference, both the performance of the regular cellular network and the indoor femtocells might be affected. Accordingly, a detailed analysis of the interference situation is required. This paper presents a simulator for the performance evaluation of LTE networks under consideration of arbitrary indoor femtocell deployments. Both, the impact of the femtocells on the macrocellular network and the impact of the macrocells on the femtocells are shown in a reference scenario.