Network evolution and QOS provisioning for integrated femtocell/macrocell networks

摘要

Integrated femtocell/macrocell networks, comprising a conventional cellularnetwork overlaid with femtocells, offer an economically appealing way toimprove coverage, quality of service, and access network capacity. The keyelement to successful femtocells/macrocell integration lies in itsself-organizing capability. Provisioning of quality of service is the maintechnical challenge of the femtocell/macrocell integrated networks, while themain administrative challenge is the choice of the proper evolutionary pathfrom the existing macrocellular networks to the integrated network. In thisarticle, we introduce three integrated network architectures which, whileincreasing the access capacity, they also reduce the deployment and operationalcosts. Then, we discuss a number of technical issues, which are key to makingsuch integration a reality, and we offer possible approaches to their solution.These issues include efficient frequency and interference management, qualityof service provisioning of the xDSL-based backhaul networks, and intelligenthandover control.