On the capacity bounds of K-tier heterogeneous small-cell networks employing aggressive frequency reuse

With the cell coverage area of current and future mobile networks becoming smaller, heterogeneous small-cell networks (HetSNets), where multiple low-power, low-cost base stations (BSs) complement the existing macrocell infrastructure, are considered constitutive elements of future mobile networks. In this paper, we propose a K-tier HetSNet, where multiple tiers of small-cells are padded between macrocells which in turn expand the network coverage and significantly increase in capacity without compromising the frequency reuse factor. In this context, we derive analytical capacity bounds of the K-tier HetSNets based on the distance of the desired user from its serving BS and all other interfering BSs. It was observed that the upper bound of the capacity becomes tighter as the number of small-cell tiers increases due to the increase in the number of small-cells. Simulation results show the performance of the proposed K-tier HetSNets against the macro-only network in terms of frequency reuse factor, capacity and area spectral efficiency.