Cochannel Interference Considerations in Frequency Reuse Small-Coverage-Area Radio Systems

Frequency reuse small-coverage-area radio systems having hexagonal and square coverage areas are compared. Comparison is made on the basis of average signal to average interference (S̅/I̅) in the corners of the areas and on the basis of the expected probability of S/I exceeding some system threshold for at least one base station that is eligible to provide service. The difference in performance between square and hexagonal systems is small, smaller than the usual uncertainties in the propagation parameters needed in the performance estimates. Results suggest that, even if the signal strength decreases as slowly as the inverse cube of the distance and the standard deviation of the large scale signal variation is as large as 10 dB, good service probabilities (on the order of 99 percent) can be provided in small-coverage-area radio systems using 30-40 channel sets.