A simulation study of performance trade-offs in open access femtocell networks

Open access is one of the access options for femtocell networks, where the mobile stations (MSs) are allowed to make hand-off to the femtocell base stations (fBSs) in their vicinity. In this paper, several performance trade-offs that are related to the deployment of open access femtocell networks are presented through computer simulations. In particular, first, impact of a capacity-based cell selection method (rather than a cell selection that is based on the link quality) on the capacity of macrocell MSs is studied. Then, cumulative distribution functions (CDFs) of the capacities of macrocell and femtocell users in open access femtocells are investigated for different dedicated channel ratios. This is followed by evaluation of the impact of femtocell deployment ratio on the system performance.