Will the Area Spectral Efficiency Monotonically Grow as Small Cells Go Dense?

In this paper, we introduce a sophisticated path loss model into the stochastic geometry analysis incorporating both line-of-sight (LoS) and non-line-of-sight (NLoS) transmissions to study their performance impact in small cell networks (SCNs). Analytical results are obtained on the coverage probability and the area spectral efficiency (ASE) assuming both a general path loss model and a special case of path loss model recommended by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards. The performance impact of LoS and NLoS transmissions in SCNs in terms of the coverage probability and the ASE is shown to be significant both quantitatively and qualitatively, compared with previous work that does not differentiate LoS and NLoS transmissions. From the investigated set of parameters, our analysis demonstrates that when the density of small cells is larger than a threshold, the network coverage probability will decrease as small cells become denser, which in turn makes the ASE suffer from a slow growth or even a notable decrease. For practical regime of small cell density, the performance results derived from our analysis are distinctively different from previous results, and shed new insights on the design and deployment of future dense/ultra-dense SCNs. It is of significant interest to further study the generality of our conclusion in other network models and with other parameter sets.