Performance Analysis of Small Cells' Deployment under Imperfect Traffic Hotspot Localization

TL;DR

This paper evaluates how imperfect small cell placement affects network performance in HetNets, revealing that hotspot location relative to macrocells determines the impact of positioning errors.

Contribution

It provides insights into the effects of small cell positioning errors on network performance considering hotspot locations in HetNets.

Findings

Hotspot proximity to macrocell influences performance gains.

Positioning errors are less critical when hotspots are far from macrocells.

Imperfect placement can still be beneficial for traffic offloading.

Abstract

Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets), long been considered in operators' roadmaps for macrocells' network improvements, still continue to attract interest for 5G network deployments. Understanding the efficiency of small cell deployment in the presence of traffic hotspots can further draw operators' attention to this feature. In this context, we evaluate the impact of imperfect small cell positioning on the network performances. We show that the latter is mainly impacted by the position of the hotspot within the cell: in case the hotspot is near the macrocell, even a perfect positioning of the small cell will not yield improved performance due to the interference coming from the macrocell. In the case where the hotspot is located far enough from the macrocell, even a large error in small cell positioning would still be beneficial in offloading traffic from the congested macrocell.