Unlicensed spectrum splitting between Femtocell and WiFi

Femtocell and WiFi are often presented as opposing technologies. The truth is that both of them play a crucial role in sustaining the continues growth in mobile traffic. In many cases both technologies will eventually be employed in a single box with access via an intelligent mobile device that will automatically select the best option. Deploying Femtocells in WiFi hotspots would let access providers add 3G capacity for users who do not have WiFi on their device and improve their quality of experience during mobility. Partitioning of the spectrum resources carries critical importance for maximizing the total capacity and quality of service (QoS) satisfaction of end users. This paper proposes a fair and QoS-based unlicensed spectrum splitting strategy between WiFi and Femtocell networks. Numerical results show that spectrum splitting under total capacity maximization constraint allows for unfair spectrum allocation, while a more equitable spectrum splitting can be accomplished by taking into account the fairness and QoS constraints.