C. Ranaweera, M.G.C. Resende, K.C. Reichmann, P.P. Iannone, P.S. Henry, B-J. Kim, P.D. Magill, K.N. Oikonomou, R.K. Sinha, and S.L. Woodward
IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 51(9), 2013
ABSTRACT
As the number
of wireless users and per-user bandwidth demands continue to increase,
both the vendor and carrier communities agree that wireless networks
must evolve toward more dense deployments. So-called “heterogeneous
networks” are a commonly proposed evolution, whereby existing
macro-cellular networks are supplemented with an underlay of small
cells. The placement of new small-cell sites is typically determined
based on various location-dependent factors such as radio propagation
calculations, user densities, and measurements of congestion and
demand. The backhaul network, which can account for a significant
portion of the total cost of the deployment, is then designed in
reaction to the placement of small cells. In contrast, we describe a
design method which first considers the locations of existing fibered
and powered facilities that might be leveraged to provide inexpensive
backhaul. Naturally, such a method is only feasible if the carrier has
a legacy local fiber network. This paper describes an efficient fiber
backhaul strategy for a small-cell network, which leverages facilities
associated with an existing fiber-to-the node (FTTN) residential access
network. Once potential small-cell sites are determined from among all
FTTN remote terminals (RTs), optimization techniques are used to choose
the most efficient subset of sites for maximum coverage, and to design
the fiber backhaul architecture.
PDF file of full paper
Last modified: 30 September 2013