Adaptive Antennas and Dynamic Spectrum Management for Femtocellular Networks: A Case Study

In this paper, we present a case study focusing on the combination of adaptive antenna arrays and dynamic spectrum management for enabling femtocellular communication networks employed in high-density base station distributions. The objective of the proposed framework is to minimize the amount of transmission interference introduced to a communication link from other users and base stations by using a combination of spectral band selection and null steering. Although each of these technologies have the ability to significantly attenuate interference sources, their combined operation has not been extensively studied in the open literature. We investigate the combination of spectral band selection and null steering within the context of a Third Generation (3G) Home Node B architecture. The system performance of the proposed framework with respect to network outage is compared to femtocellular networks employing only null steering, only spectral band selection, or neither technology. Simulation results show that the combination of these two technologies yield significant performance gains relative to when neither technology is employed.