The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)

EFFECTS OF USER-DEPLOYED, CO-CHANNEL FEMTOCELLS ON THE

CALL DROP PROBABILITY IN A RESIDENTIAL SCENARIO
Lester T. W. Ho, Holger Claussen,
Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent,
Swindon, United Kingdom.

ABSTRACT infrastructure associated costs of operators if public access to

these femtocells and appropriate service bundles and
The femtocell concept aims to combine fixed-line broadband
compensation mechanisms are implemented [4]. Co-channel
access with cellular telephony using the deployment of low-
frequency re-use with the underlay network maximises the
cost, low-power 3G base stations in the subscriber’s homes.
efficiency and flexibility in which operators can use valuable
These plug-and-play residential base stations would be
3G licensed spectrum.
deployed without much consideration to cell planning on the
part of the user, relying instead on inbuilt auto-configuration
Femtocell deployments however, have several design
abilities to minimise the impact on the macro cellular network
challenges. A wide scale deployment will result in a very
by self-provisioning parameters such as the transmit and pilot
large number of home base stations and cells compared to
power levels. In this paper, simulations of the deployment of
conventional macro cellular network base stations. Because of
such femtocells in a residential scenario were performed to
this, the usual practice of performing careful cell planning and
study its effects on the service experienced by users that are
optimisation prior to the deployment of a cell would be
connected to the underlay macrocells. The results show that
prohibitively expensive for femtocell deployments. Instead,
with auto-configuration, the deployment of the femtocells
the femtocells must have the ability to auto-configure their
would not pose a significant impact on the dropped call rate,
radio parameters such that the impact on the macro cellular
causing an additional 0.45% increase in chance of a macrocell
network is minimised. The aim of this is that the users
user’s call dropping in the simulation’s worst case scenario.
themselves would be able to plug in and power up femtocells
In addition the impact of such femtocell deployment on the
in their homes, much in the same fashion as one would set up
network signalling is discussed.
a WLAN access point.
I. INTRODUCTION
One of the key parameters that need to be auto-configured is
The telecommunications service market has traditionally been the transmit power of the femtocells, particularly if they
divided to fixed-line and wireless mobile parts, both from the introduce co-channel interference sue to operation in the same
technology and the business point of views. In the past few frequency as the underlay network. However, the effect of
years, however, all-IP technologies have been developed that this would be limited if the power of femtocells are low
enable operators to provide services to subscribers that enough so that their signals do not leak out of the home
combines fixed and mobile access technologies [1]. An significantly, but high enough within the home to provide the
example of such FMC (fixed mobile convergence) technology femtocells user with the desired QoS.
is UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) [2] that combines
cellular services with unlicensed spectrum technologies such Femtocell support
as 802.11 WLAN and Bluetooth. node/gateway

PSTN
More recently, a new development has emerged: the 3G
femtocell. A 3G femtocell can be considered as the cellular
equivalent of a WLAN access point, and is connected via SGSN GGSN

Ethernet to the home router, and traffic would be backhauled

MSC
over IP back to the operator’s core network using the IP Internet
customer’s broadband connection. Femtocells can be
designed with a flat architecture, with what is called a
RNC
“collapsed RAN” approach [3]. This means that the
functionality of the radio access network such as the Radio
Network Controller (RNC), Serving and Gateway GPRS
Support Nodes (SGSN, GGSN) are integrated into the
femtocell base station itself. A scenario deployment of a
femtocell overlay with a macrocell underlay is illustrated in
Fig. 1. Macro-cell
Node B Femtocells

One of the main advantages of the deployment of low-cost,

low-power UMTS femtocells in residential homes is that it Traditional UMTS Architecture Femtocell Architecture

enables FMC services without the need for specially modified

or dual-mode user terminals. Apart from providing FMC Figure 1: Overview of femtocell home base station overlay
services, this also has the potential for drastically reducing the deployment with a macro-cellular underlay network.

1-4244-1144-0/07/$25.00 ©2007 IEEE.

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 The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)

This paper aims to analyse the effect of the additional
handovers caused by a co-channel femtocell deployment on
the dropped call rate of users on the underlay macrocell, and
to highlight the importance of power control in femtocell
deployments. In Section II, the calculation of handover
probabilities for macrocell users is described. In Section III, a
simulation to investigate the drop probabilities on a larger
scale of a residential neighbourhood in London is presented
and the results are discussed. Section IV gives a short
discussion on the impact on signalling. Finally, the
conclusions of this study are given in Section V.
II. HANDOVER PROBABILITIES
System level simulations were performed to identify the
handover probabilities of a passing macrocell user as a
function of the distance from the femtocell. A scenario with 7
macrocells with 3 sectors each is considered as shown in
Fig. 2. Femtocells are deployed randomly within the coverage
area, shown as circles, and re-use the same frequency as the
macrocells in a hierarchical cell structure. Key simulation
parameters including the propagation models for path-loss,
shadow fading, and the antenna gain for the macrocell sectors
y[m]
constant cell range independent of the distance to the
macrocell in such a co-channel hierarchical cell structure.
The target range of 10 metres was chosen to give a
reasonable indoor coverage without covering too much
area outside that would result in increased handover
probabilities for passing macrocell users. The adjustment
of femtocell transmit and pilot powers could be performed
automatically by the femtocell, by measuring the
macrocell signals, either using a built-in receiver or
measurement reports from connected mobiles, and making
the appropriate adjustments as described in more detail
in [5].
1000
500

0
assumed are shown in Table 1.

The macrocell downlink transmit power is set such that the

received signal to noise ratio inside of a house at the cell edge -500
is 10 dB, assuming an additional wall loss of 15 dB. This is to
ensure the full coverage of the area, including indoor
coverage at the cell edge. As a result, the obtainable
throughputs from the macro-cell are mainly interference -1000
Area of interest for
limited. The pilots are set to 1/10th of data power for both handover probabilities
macro- and femtocells, which is common practice in UMTS. -1000 -500 0 500 1000
x[m]
It is assumed that a handover is triggered when the received Figure 2: Example of one realization of the simulated
pilot signal of a new cell is 4 dB higher than the pilot signal scenario for handover probability calculation.
of the current cell for a time of 500 ms. When a handover is
triggered, the time of the handover procedure is assumed to Table 1: Simulation Parameters
be 650 ms.
Outdoor path loss is modelled as 28+35log10(d) dB where d is
Handover probabilities for three different femtocell power the distance from the base station in metres.
Indoor path loss is modelled as 38.5+20log10(d) + Lwalls dB
configurations are investigated: where the wall loss Lwalls is explicitly modelled (15/10/7 dB for
external/internal/light internal walls respectively, 3 dB for
ƒ Fixed power: All femtocells are configured with the same doors, and 1 dB for windows
powers for data and pilot (1/10th of data power) Shadow fading is modelled as random process with log-normal
irrespective of their location in the macrocell. The powers distribution (8 dB standard deviation for the macrocell signal
are set such that a target femtocell range of 10 metres is where other houses and obstacles are implicitly modelled, and 4
achieved in 90% of all locations within the macrocell. As dB standard deviation for the femtocell signal)
a result, the femtocell radius depends on the received The receiver noise power is modelled as 10 log10 (kT NF W)
macrocell pilot power and therefore the distance from the where the effective noise bandwidth W = 3.84 x 106 Hz,
macrocell. Note that this method is only used for and kT = 1.3804 x 10−23 x 290 W/Hz.
comparison purposes and is not recommended for The noise figure at the UE is NF[dB] = 7 dB.
The macrocell antenna gain is calculated as
femtocell deployments.
 θ 
2

G (θ )dB = Gmax − min 12  , Gs , −π ≤ θ ≤ π with
ƒ Auto-configured power (active): The transmit power for   β  
each femtocell is set to achieve a SINR of 0 dB at the β = 70π / 180 angle where gain pattern is 3dB down from peak
target cell radius of 10 metres assuming line of sight path- Gs = 20dB sidelobe gain level in dB
loss and the pilot power to 1/10th of the data power,
Gmax = 16dB maximum gain level in dB
subject to a maximum power of 125 mW. This achieves a

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 The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)

ƒ Auto-configured power (idle): When no active call is in
progress, the femtocell pilot is reduced by 10 dB
compared to the auto-configured power in active mode
described above to minimize handovers from passing
users. To keep UEs that are within range camping on the
femtocell in idle mode, the cell reselection threshold is
increased by 10 dB so that the idle mode coverage
remains the same as before.
Handover probabilities are calculated for users walking past
the front of a house with a deployed femtocell at a speed of 1
m/s, at a distance of 1m from the house boundary. The
walking path and the considered house model, the ground
floor of a typical terraced house in London, is illustrated in
Fig. 3. In addition an example of the coverage and received
pilot power levels for both macro- and femtocell access is
shown for one specific house and femtocell location.
Figure 4 shows the resulting handover probabilities for
passing macrocell users as a function of the distance from the
femtocell averaged over 50 houses. Each house is located
randomly within the sectors of the central macrocell. Each
femtocell is randomly located in the house at the simulated
distance from the footpath within the house. It is shown that
with the fixed power allocation the handover probabilities are
significantly higher compared to when the pilot is auto-
configured. As expected the reduced pilot when all femtocell
UEs are in idle mode can further reduce the handover
probabilities.
III. SIMULATIONS OF URBAN RESIDENTIAL SCENARIO
In order to obtain a larger scale insight into the overall effect
of a femtocell deployment, simulations were performed to
examine the call drop and handover probabilities of underlay
macrocell users (i.e. the user walking on the footpath and
connected to the macrocell) in a real-world location.

The large scale scenario simulated was that of a 500 m by

500 m portion of a residential area within the Greater London
area, as shown in Fig. 5, with 10% of all households in that
area having a deployed femtocell from the operator of
interest. This translates to a total of 130 femtocells deployed
at randomly chosen houses, and with the base stations placed
randomly within the indoor portion of those homes. This
particular residential area was chosen because of the relative
homogeneity and uniformity of the house sizes and layouts,
and the compact, terraced style also results in them being
densely packed together. The close proximity of the homes
from the public pavements further contributes to give a
(a) (b) “worst-case” example of the co-channel femtocell
deployment.
Figure 3: Coverage and received pilot power levels around
one femtocell for (a) macrocell-, and (b) femtocell access.

1
Fixed power
0.9 Auto-configured power, active
0.8 <- House boundary Auto-configured power, idle

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3
y

0.2

0.1
p

0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Femto-cell distance from footpath

Figure 4: Probabilities of handover from the macrocell to the

femtocell and back for a passing user as function of the
Figure 5: Simulated residential area and femtocell placements
distance from a femtocell.

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 The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)
Figure 6: Configuration of houses in simulated area
Each femtocell home is assumed to be occupied by one to
four home users. The scenario aims to capture the residential
peak hour conditions (6pm-9pm), whereby all femtocell users
are assumed to be at home. It has to be noted that in this case
where all residents are at home, the likelihood of a
pedestrian walking outside should be quite small. Each user at
home has a 100 mErlang voice traffic call model, and an
evening mobile TV usage model derived from mobile TV
trial results presented in [6], with TV sessions lasting on
average 24 minutes, with a 16% busy hour mobile TV session
attempt.
The macrocell cell user has a voice call model that produces a
mean call duration of 100 seconds. The call inter-arrival is
3600 seconds, but this parameter is not important as the drop
probability is measured on a per-call basis. The macrocell
user moves at 1 m/s, starts from one randomly chosen entry
point on the map, and moves to a randomly chosen exit point.
Since realistic walking paths are not random but in direction
of a destination, the exit point will very rarely be to the same
direction as the entry point (e.g. users coming in from the
eastern edge of the map will only have a very small chance of
choosing an exit point on the eastern edge). The macrocell
user will move on the inner edge of the pavement, so the
macrocell user can come to be as close as 1m away from a
femtocell, as illustrated in Fig. 6.
A. Results with different pilot power adaptation schemes
Using the handover probabilities shown in Fig. 4, simulations
were performed to examine the increase in handover
probabilities of a macrocell cell user due only to the co-
channel deployment of femtocells. The simulation takes into
account the auto-configuration abilities of the femtocell base
stations. This includes algorithms to auto-configure and adapt
the pilot powers. Three pilot configuration schemes were
simulated:
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4.5 m
13.5 m
House
1m
Macrocell user
Sidewalk
ƒ Fixed pilot power (Scheme A): The femtocell pilot is set
at a fixed power level out of the box, which allows 90% of
the femtocells within a macrocell coverage area to obtain
a 10 m free space coverage.
ƒ Pilot adjusted to distance from macrocell (Scheme B): The
pilot power is adjusted relative to the macrocell’s signal.
The femtocell pilot is adjusted to obtain a target of 10m
free space coverage if it can, limited by its maximum pilot
transmit power.
ƒ Pilot adjusted according to femtocell usage (Scheme C):
The pilot is adjusted based on the femtocell usage. When
there are femtocell users in active mode (in a call), the
pilot is set to the same level as Scheme B. When all users
are in idle mode (not in a call), the pilot power is reduced
by 10dB. This scheme assumes that the femtocell user’s
idle mode cell reselection threshold is reduced by 10dB,
i.e. the UE will still camp on the femtocell when in idle
mode despite the reduced power.
For Scheme A, the fixed power curve in Fig. 4 with the circle
markers is used. For Scheme B, the auto-configured power
curve for active mode with the square markers is used. And
for Scheme C, the lowered auto-configured power curve for
idle mode with the diamond markers is used when all
femtocell users are idle mode and the auto-configured pilot
curve for active mode is used when at least one femtocell user
is in active mode.
The resulting macrocell user handover probability per call
when Scheme A is implemented is 80.77%. This result shows
that using a fixed power would be not feasible in this scenario
due to the very high handover probabilities. Assuming that
there is a 2% probability that a handover results in a dropped
call, the drop probability during a handover event is 3.96% of
the handover probabilities (i.e. 2% for macrocell to femtocell
 The 18th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC'07)
handover, plus 2% for femtocell to macrocell handover if the
call did not drop during the first handover). This means that
each macrocell call has an approximately 3.2% chance of
dropping due to handovers resulting from the deployment of
the femtocells alone.
For Scheme B, the user handover probability per call is
22.9%. This is a significant improvement compared to
Scheme A, and translates to a 0.9% call drop probability due
to macrocell to femtocell handovers.
Using Scheme C, the handover probabilities are dependent on
the usage of the femtocells. Simulations were run with 1 to 4
users in all femtocells. The results of the simulation in Table
2 shows a significant improvement over Schemes A and B,
particularly when the number of femtocell users are low. The
drop probabilities due to handovers range from 0.3% with 1
femtocell user to 0.45% with 4 femtocell users, which are
acceptable given that the average household size in that
neighbourhood is 2.36 persons [7].
Table 2: Handover probabilities for Scheme C.
Users per femtocell Macrocell user handover probability
1 user 7.5%
2 users 9.4%
3 users 10.3%
4 users 11.3%
The simulation results for the three schemes reinforce the
need for auto-configuration abilities to provision the
femtocells properly. Using a default fixed setting, as with
Scheme A, would render widespread deployment impractical,
not only because of the resulting unacceptably high dropped
calls, but also the substantial increase in signalling overhead
required to support the higher handover rate.
IV. IMPACT ON NETWORK SIGNALLING
One of the additional consequences of a widespread femtocell
deployment is the increased network signalling associated
with mobility procedures in the core network. This increase in
signalling can be considerable especially in areas with a large
number of femtocells and a very high mobile user density.
For example, in a dense urban scenario with a user density of
45,000 mobile users per km2, the pilot power auto-
configuration of Scheme B results in approximately 37,000
handovers per hour per km2 of coverage. Using a more
dynamic power configuration approach such as Scheme C can
reduce the handovers to between 16,740 for 4 femtocell users
and 12,600 for 1 femtocell user per hour per km2 of coverage.
Alternative possible solutions to lower the number of
femtocell related mobility signalling events are to block
mobility between femtocells and the underlay macrocell, or to
perform handovers to femtocells only for nomadic users (i.e.
users without the need for mobility). However, these steps
would mean that co-channel deployment of femtocells on the
same frequency as the macrocells may no longer be feasible
when no alternative macrocell frequency is available. In
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addition, this would also limit the use of user-deployed femto-
or picocells as a means of supplementing the macrocell
coverage which can significantly reduce the total network
costs [4].
Therefore, in the long-term, the problem of signalling needs
to be addressed for femtocell scenarios, possibly by
implementing changes to the network architecture such that
the impact of signalling to the core network is more localised.
One approach may be the use of flatter, collapsed cellular
architectures [3].
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the concept of hierarchical co-channel 3G
femtocell deployments to provide converged wireless and
wireline services was presented. The advantages of such a
deployment, such as the ability to use single-mode, legacy
mobile terminals, the increased efficiency in licensed spectrum
usage, and the potential of significantly reducing the
infrastructure costs makes this concept an especially attractive
one to operators. However, femtocells require auto-
configuration abilities as manual cell planning processes
normally used in macrocell networks would not be financially
feasible due to the large number of femtocells. One of the main
aspects of this auto-configuration is the self-provisioning of
femtocell power and cell size. Simulations were performed for
a residential co-channel femtocell deployment scenario to
determine the potential effects on macrocell users with and
without auto-configuration. The results showed that the
increase in drop probabilities due to the deployment of these
femtocells are low if power adaptation techniques are
implemented, but unacceptably high if these techniques are not
used. This highlights the vital importance of auto-configuration
in femtocell deployments. The impact on the network
signalling was discussed and the results suggest that for efforts
to reduce the signalling at the core network would be required,
such as using flatter architectures.
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