Towards a framework for small-cell network planning

To address the exponential growth of traffic on mobile cellular networks, heterogeneous networks have been proposed in which numerous small-radius microcells commonly referred to as "small cells" are placed alongside traditional macrocells. The practical rollout of these small cells is challenging. For example, the effects of land terrain and urban geography on cellular mobile signal propagations can significantly influence transmission quality and coverage. In this paper, we describe a small-cell planning framework that takes into consideration the effects of land terrain variation and urban geography in planning the location of the small cells. Our framework is shown to utilize fewer cells than the maximum limit of 30 cell sites/km2 in urban area for LTE 1800MHz network. We further formulate a Linear Program to obtain the optimal operating power of these small cells whilst constrained by the power and capacity requirements and subjected to daily capacity demand variations. Our preliminary results show that with our small cell power management scheme which is based on traffic and capacity demand, tangible power savings can be achieved throughout the day.