Outage and Diversity-Multiplexing Trade-Off Analysis of Closed and Open-Access Femtocells

Femtocells promise to increase the number of users served in a given macrocell by creating indoor hotspots connected to the mobile operator network via cheap backhaul links (i.e., the Internet). However, the interference created by the femtocell transmissions may critically impair the performance of the macrocell users. This effect can be potentially alleviated via so called open-access home base stations. In this paper, the transmission reliability of macro (outdoor) and femto (indoor) users is studied for a quasi-static fading channel in the presence of both open and closed-access home base stations, in terms of outage probability and diversity-multiplexing trade-off. Analytical results are derived that shed light on the impact of femtocells and the advantages of open-access home base stations in different regimes of channel power gains and transmission rates.