Capacity consideration for indoor femtocell networks in TV white spaces

摘要

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took the unprecedented step to approve the usage of TV white spaces, i.e., locally vacant TV channels, in 2012. This TV spectrum will present new opportunities for wireless access technologies and applications. The utilization of TV spectrum also comes with some technical challenges. One of the most fundamental is that how much capacity can be achieved in TV white spaces network. Prior works focused on capacity consideration for cellular network in outdoor scenario leaving important femtocell network in indoor scenario largely open for investigation. In this paper, we explore the capacity for femtocell network by developing a TV white spaces reuse and power allocation scheme. The overall objective is to maximize the capacity achieved by a femtocell network while keeping the interference to the primary receiver and macro receiver at an acceptable level. Simulation results show that due to the signal attenuation by the building structure, there exists considerable TV white spaces for potential usage. This result is interesting because we can improve the capacity of femtocell network by using the TV channels.