Capacity improvement by employing femto cells in a macro cell HSDPA network

Very low transmission power (femto) base stations can be used in small isolated areas with insufficient or no macro cell coverage to provide very high bit rates to users at close proximity of the base stations. In this paper the impact of femto cells operating on the same frequency as macro cells is evaluated in terms of several performance indicators in a realistically modeled single carrier HSDPA network by dynamic system level simulations. Conventional Rake and an advanced linear minimum mean squared error (LMMSE) equalizer receivers with and without receive diversity at the mobile terminals are considered. The results showed that co-channel femto cells offer considerable gains from both user and network perspective with all receivers even if the femto cell users are not concentrated near the femto base stations.