Realistic Indoor Wi-Fi and Femto Deployment Study as the Offloading Solution to LTE Macro Networks

This paper investigates the downlink performance of indoor deployed Wi-Fi and Femto as the offloading solution to the LTE macro cellular networks in a realistic large-scale dense-urban scenario. With an assumed broadband traffic volume growth of 50x compared to today´s levels, it is evaluated that a dual-carrier LTE macro network will not be able to provide sufficient service coverage with a 1 Mbps minimum data rate and, indoor coverage is identified as the major bottleneck.. We evaluate the performance of indoor Wi-Fi and Femto cell deployment to offload the congested LTE macro network. We show that, in a dual-carrier LTE macro case with a total of 30 MHz spectrum, Wi-Fi access point density of 230/km2 is required to meet the set target of 90% coverage with a minimum user data rate of 1 Mbps. For the same scenario it was found that an out-band Femto access point density of 1200/km2 is required. Furthermore, we show that in-band Femto cell cannot meet the set network requirement even at a very high access point density. We also show that Wi-Fi and Femto cell can offload the same amount of traffic when they are deployed at the same access point density.