Effects of user-deployed, co-channel femtocells on the call drop probability in a residential scenario

The femtocell concept aims to combine fixed-line broadband access with cellular telephony using the deployment of low-cost, low-power 3G base stations in the subscriber's homes. These plug-and-play residential base stations would be deployed without much consideration to cell planning on the part of the user, relying instead on inbuilt auto-configuration abilities to minimise the impact on the macro cellular network by self-provisioning parameters such as the transmit and pilot power levels. In this paper, simulations of the deployment of such femtocells in a residential scenario were performed to study its effects on the service experienced by users that are connected to the underlay macrocells. The results show that with auto-configuration, the deployment of the femtocells would not pose a significant impact on the dropped call rate, causing an additional 0.45% increase in chance of a macrocell user's call dropping in the simulation's worst case scenario. In addition the impact of such femtocell deployment on the network signalling is discussed.