Improving system performance in a WCDMA FDD network using indoor pico base stations

The bandwidth, quality of service, and indoor capacity demand is increasing in existing and future cellular networks. In the first and second generation mobile networks, speech has been the dominating service. In emerging 3G technologies, like the WCDMA FDD system, new types of services are enabled by the higher data rates supported. Small areas with high traffic intensity, hotspots, may cause problems in the network. In particular, indoor hotspots can degrade performance. We study different hotspot locations and hotspot loads. We show how performance can be improved, both in the hotspot itself and in the surrounding macro cell network, by using pico base stations.