The tradeoff between energy efficiency and system performance of femtocell deployment

In this paper we discuss some of the benefits and challenges of deploying femtocells in a cellular network. In particular, we focus on the tradeoff between energy efficiency and system performance. With realistic LTE system parameters, we have shown that femtocells can indeed improve energy efficiency of the network. However, this comes with a price - performance degradation due to interference, which is especially severe in dense deployment scenarios. Therefore, femtocell solutions are “green”, but also “noisy”. Interference mitigation mechanisms such as power control, mobility management, and resource allocation are then discussed.