Dealing with Loud Neighbors: The Benefits and Tradeoffs of Adaptive Femtocell Access

Femtocells are low-power, very small-service-area (e.g. home or office environment) cellular base stations that will significantly impact the cellular landscape in the next several years. One of the most important open technical issues related to femtocells concerns the impact on system performance of different policies regarding who is allowed to connect to a femtocell. In the present paper, interaction between mobile stations (MS) that are near to, but not necessarily communicating with, femtocells is explored. It is shown that an adaptive femtocell access policy that takes specific account of the instantaneous loads on the network can lead to improved performance over a completely open, or completely closed approach.