Increasing mobile rates while minimizing cost per bit — Cooperation vs. denser deployment

It is known that future cellular communication systems must meet an ever increasing demand for mobile data rates, i.e. must consequently improve spectral efficiency. Two degrees of freedom to address this issue are to use a denser deployment or introduce cooperation between base stations. This paper introduces models to capture both achievable rates and the costs connected to these two options (addressing capex, opex, energy and backhaul), and yields an insight into their impact on the overall cost per bit.