Skip to main content
Log in

A survey on heterogeneous mobile networks planning in indoor dense areas

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In dense indoor areas, high numbers of people use their smartphones and tablets to share or download pictures, videos, or data. The heterogeneous network (HetNet) solves the problems caused by the explosion of data generated by smartphones and tablets. Heterogeneous networks use a mix of Relay, Femtocell, Pico, and Macro base stations to improve spectral efficiency per unit area. Operators wish to know how to upgrade existing networks and how to design new ones. This subject has become hot in the industry. In this paper, we presented the architecture of heterogeneous networks. The parameters affecting the heterogeneous networks topology plan are discussed. Moreover, a comparison of existing solutions that consider the problems of base station layout planning is presented. Finally, a road map is given to point out to the main future directions of researches on the topological design of dense area heterogeneous mobile networks.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Deebak BD, Enver EE, Al-Turjman F (2018) Analyzing enhanced real-time uplink scheduling algorithm in 3GPP LTE-advanced networks using multimedia systems. ETT 29:1–22. https://doi.org/10.1002/ett.3443

  2. Yaqoob I, Hashem I, Mehmood Y, Gani A, Mokhtar S, Guizani S (2017) Enabling communication technologies for smart cities. IEEE Commun Mag 55(1):112–120. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCOM.2017.1600232CM

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Hamaguchi K, Ma Y, Takada M, Nishijima T, Shimura T (2012) Telecommunications systems in smart cities. Hitachi Rev 61:152–158

    Google Scholar 

  4. Qualcomm Incorporated (2015). https://www.qualcomm.com/documents/lteheterogeneous-networks. Accessed 26 March 2015

  5. Al-Turjman F, Alturjman S (2018) 5G/IoT-enabled UAVs for multimedia delivery in industry-oriented. Appl Multimedia Tools Appl 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-018-6288-7

  6. Vujic D (2013) On indoor to outdoor radio access network planning in mobile systems. 11th International Conference on Telecommunication in Modern Satellite, Cable and Broadcasting Services (TELSIKS). https://doi.org/10.1109/TELSKS.2013.6704455

  7. Zahir T, Arshad K, Nakata A, Moessner K (2013) Interference management in Femtocells. IEEE Commun Surv Tutorials 15(1):293–311. https://doi.org/10.1109/SURV.2012.020212.00101

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Dai J, Wang S (2016) Clustering-based interference management in densely deployed Femtocell networks. Digital Commun Netw 2(4):175–183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcan.2016.10.002

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Sebire B (2015) 3GPP. http://www.3gpp.org/dynareport/36300.htm. Accessed 5 Oct 2015

  10. Motorola (2015). 3G4G. http://www.3g4g.co.uk/Lte/LTE_WP_0706_Motorola.pdf. Accessed 5 Oct 2015

  11. Akyildiz F, Gutierrez-Estevez DM, Reyes EC (2010) The evolution to 4G cellular systems: LTE-Advanced. Phys Commun 3(4):217–244. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phycom.2010.08.001

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Tran T, Shin Y, Shin O (2012) Overview of enabling technologies for 3GPP LTE-advanced. EURASIP J Wirel Commun Netw 54:1–12. https://doi.org/10.1186/1687-1499-2012-54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Brutyan A (2013) Performance analyses of different MIMO modes in LTE release 8 networks. Dissertation, TAMPERE University of Technology. http://dspace.cc.tut.fi/dpub/bitstream/handle/123456789/21498/Brutyan.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y. . Accessed 2 Jun 2019

  14. Chandrasekhar V, Andrews JG, Gatherer A (2008) Femtocell networks: a survey. IEEE Commun Mag 46(9). Article (CrossRef Link):59–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Zhang J, Andrews JG (2008) Distributed antenna system with randomness. IEEE Trans Wirel Commun 7(9):3636–3646

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Salman HA, Ibrahim LF, Fayed Z (2014) Overview of LTE-Advanced mobile network plan layout. 2014 5th International Conference on Intelligent Systems, Modelling, and Simulation, Langkawi, pp. 585–590. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISMS.2014.106

  17. Wirth T, Thiele L, Haustein T, Braz O, Stefanik J (2010) LTE amplify and forward relaying for indoor coverage extension. In IEEE 72nd Vehicular Technology Conference Fall (VTC 2010-Fall), Ottawa, Canada

  18. Venkatkumar V, Wirth T, Haustein T, Schulz E (2009) Relaying in long term evolution: indoor full frequency reuse. Wireless Conference, EW 2009, European, Aalborg

  19. Wirth T, Venkatkumar V, Haustein T, Schulz E, Halfmann R (2009) LTE-Advanced relaying for outdoor range extension. Vehicular Technology Conference Fall (VTC 2009-Fall), 2009 IEEE 70th, Anchorage, AK, 2009. https://doi.org/10.1109/VETECF.2009.5378969

  20. Letourneux F, Corre Y, Suteau E, Lostanlen Y (2012) 3D coverage analysis of LTE urban heterogeneous networks with dense femtocell deployments. EURASIP J Wirel Commun Netw 319:1–19. https://doi.org/10.1186/1687-1499-2012-319

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Saeed R A, Chaudhari B S, Rania A. Mokhtar (2012) Femtocell communications and technologies: business opportunities and deployment challenges. U.S. IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-4666-0092-8

  22. Zhang Y, Li YY, Sousa ES, Zhang Q(2010) Pilot power minimization in HSDPA Femtocells. in IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference GLOBECOM 2010, Miami, FL. Article (CrossRef Link)

  23. Al-Turjman F, Ever E, Zahmatkesh H (2019) Small cells in the forthcoming 5G/IoT: traffic modelling and deployment overview. IEEE Commun Surv Tutorials 21(1):28–65. https://doi.org/10.1109/COMST.2018.2864779

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Chandrasekhar V (2009) Coexistence in Femtocell-aided cellular srchitectures. DISSERTATION, The University of Texas at Austin in Partial. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/7543/chandrasekharv71419.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

  25. Kou T, Liu J, Qian C, Sheral H (2012) Femtocell Base station deployment in commercial buildings: a global optimization approach. IEEE J Sel Areas Commun 30(3):652–663. https://doi.org/10.1109/JSAC.2012.120414

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Fujitsu (2013) http://www.fujitsu.com/ca/en/Images/4G-Femtocell-for-Dense-MetroEnvironment.pdf. Accessed 30 Sept 2015

  27. Recommendation ITU-R M.1225 (1997) Guidelines for Evaluation of Radio Transmission Technologies for Imt-2000. https://www.itu.int/dms_pubrec/itu-r/rec/m/R-REC-M.1225-0-199702-I!!PDF-E.pdf. Accessed 1 Jan 2019

  28. Namgeol O, Han SW, Kim H (2010) System capacity and coverage analysis of femtocell networks. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)

  29. Khan M F, Wang B (2014) Effective placement of femtocell base stations in commercial buildings. 2014 Sixth International Conference on Ubiquitous and Future Networks (ICUFN), Shanghai, pp. 176–180

  30. Bouras C, Diles G, Ntoutsos D (2018) Sleep mode strategies for dense small cell 5G networks. 10th International Congress on Ultra Modern Telecommunications and Control Systems and Workshops (ICUMT). https://doi.org/10.1109/ICUMT.2018.8631203

  31. Lim J H, Ahmad R B, Jusoh M, Sabapathy T (2015) Power management in LTE Femtocell networks. In: Sulaiman H, Othman M, Abd. Aziz M, Abd Malek M (eds) Theory and applications of applied electromagnetics. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, 344:265–293 Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17269-9_29

  32. Khalifah A, Akkari N, Aldabbagh G(2014) Dense areas femtocell deployment: access types and challenges. The Third International Conference on e-Technologies and Networks for Development (ICeND2014), Beirut, pp. 64–69. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICeND.2014.6991354

  33. Avilés R, Toril JM, Luna-Ramírez M (2015) A femtocell location strategy for improving adaptive traffic sharing in heterogeneous LTE networks. S J Wirel Commun Netw 2015:38. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13638-015-0246-0

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Nagy L, Farkas L(2000) Indoor base station location optimization using genetic algorithms. The 11th IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, vol.2, pp. 843–846

  35. Ji Z, Sarkar TK, Li B (2002) Methods for optimizing the location of base stations for indoor wireless communications. IEEE Trans Antennas Propag 50(10):1481–1483. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAP.2002.802155

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Nagy L, Szalay Z(2010) Global optimization of indoor radio coverage. Conference proceedings ICECom, pp. 1–4

  37. Rodd SF, Math MM, Kulkarni AH (2009) Optimization algorithms for access point deployment in wireless networks. J Comput Appl 2(1):2–2

    Google Scholar 

  38. Nebro AJ, Chicano F, Molina G, Chicano F, Luna F, Durillo JJ (2007) Optimal antenna placement using a new multiobjective CHC algorithm. 6th International Conference in Numerical Methods and Applications

  39. Wong JKL, Mason AJ, A J, Neve MJ, M J, Sowerby KW (2006) Base station placement in indoor wireless systems using binary integer programming. IEE Proc Commun 153(5):771–778

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Ngadiman Y, Chew YH, Yeo BS (2005) A new approach for finding optimal base stations configuration for CDMA systems jointly with uplink and downlink constraints. IEEE 16th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio. Communications 4:2751–2755

    Google Scholar 

  41. Pujji L K, Sowerby K W, Neve M J (2009) A new algorithm for efficient optimization of base station placement in indoor wireless communication systems. Communication Networks and Services Research Conference, pp 425–427

  42. Wang S, Guo W, O’Farrell T (2012) Optimizing femtocell placement in an interference limited network: theory and simulation. IEEE 76th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC), pp 1–6

  43. Talau M, Wille E C G, Lopes H S (2013) Solving the base station placement problem by means of swarm intelligence. 2013 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Communication Systems and Networks, pp 39–44. https://doi.org/10.1109/CICommS.2013.6582852

  44. Pujji L, Sowerby K, Neve M (2013) Development of a hybrid algorithm for efficient optimisation of base station placement for indoor wireless communication systems. Wireless Personal Commun 69(1):471–486

    Article  Google Scholar 

  45. Sathya V, Ramamurthy A, Tamma B R (2014) On placement and dynamic power control of Femtocells in LTE HetNets. In Global Communications Conference, Austin, TX, USA, pp 4394–4399. https://doi.org/10.1109/GLOCOM.2014.7037499

  46. Sathya V, Ramamurthy A, Tamma, B R (2015) Joint placement and power control of LTE Femto base stations in enterprise environments. In Proceedings of International Conference on Computing Networking and Communications, Garden Grove, CA, USA, pp 1029–1033. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCNC.2015.7069489

  47. Tahalani M, Sathya V, Ramamurthy A, Suhas U S, Giluka M K, Tamma B R (2014) Optimal placement of Femto base stations in enterprise Femtocell networks. In Proceedings of International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems, New Delhi, India, pp 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ANTS.2014.7057240

  48. Ramamurthy A, Sathya V, Venkatesh V, Ramji R, Tamma B R (2015) Energy-efficient Femtocell placement in LTE networks. In: Proceedings of International Conference on Computing and Communication Technologies, Bangalore, India, pp. 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ANTS.2014.7057240

  49. Wechtaisong C, Chamnanka P, Prommak C (2017) Efficient placement of femtocell base stations for 4G-LTE networks in multi-floor buildings. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Communication and Information Processing (ICCIP '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, pp 320–325. https://doi.org/10.1145/3162957.3163007

  50. Tahalani M, Sathya V, Suhas US, Chaganti R, Tamma BR (2013) Optimal Femto placement in enterprise building. Adv Netw Telecommun Syst 4:4–6

    Google Scholar 

  51. Ramamurthy A, Sathya V, Venkatesh V, Ramji R, Tamma BR (2015) Energy-efficient femtocell placement in LTE networks. 2015 IEEE Int Conf Electron Comput Commun Technol, pp 1–6

  52. Ibrahim LF, Salman HS, Fayed Z (2018) Using clustering techniques to plan indoor Femtocells layout. IJCSNS Int J Comput Sci Netw Secur 18(5):67–74

    Google Scholar 

  53. Ibrahim LF, Salman HA, Sery SY, Taha Z (2019) Using clustering techniques to plan indoor Femtocell base stations layout in multi-floors. Comput J 62:919–930. https://doi.org/10.1093/comjnl/bxz007

    Article  Google Scholar 

  54. Nagaraja S, Khaitan V, Jiang Y, Patel C, Meshkati F, Tokgoz Y, Yavuz M (2011) Downlink transmit power calibration for enterprise femtocells. Conference (VTC Fall), San Francisco, CA, pp 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1109/VETECF.2011.6093268

  55. Alotaibi AA, Angelides MC (2019) A serious gaming approach to managing interference in ad hoc femtocell wireless networks. Comput Commun 134:163–184. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2018.07.013.v

    Article  Google Scholar 

  56. Alotaibi A A, Angelides M C (2017) Femtocell deployment plan: moving indoors. 2017 Intelligent Systems Conference (IntelliSys), London, pp. 210–216. https://doi.org/10.1109/IntelliSys.2017.8324293

  57. Liu J, Chen Q, Sherali H D (2012) Algorithm design for femtocell base station placement in commercial building environments. Proceed IEEE INFOCOM, pp. 2951–2955

  58. Sharma C, Wong Y F, Soh W S, Wong WC (2010) Access point placement for fingerprint-based localization. IEEE International Conference on Communication Systems, pp 238–243

  59. Farkas K, Huszák A, Gódor G (2013) Optimization of Wi-Fi access point placement for indoor localization. IEEE 6th Symp. On Wireless Personal Multimedia Com. Conference. 1(1):28–33

  60. Guo W, Wang S, Chu X, Zhang J, Chen J, Song H (2013) Automated small-cell deployment for heterogeneous cellular networks. IEEE Commun Mag 51(5):46–53

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Han K, Choi Y, Kim D, Na M, Choi S, Han K (2009) Optimization of femtocell network configuration under interference constraints. 7th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks, Seoul, pp. 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1109/WIOPT.2009.5291642

  62. Sathya RV, Venkatesh V, Ramji R, Ramamurthy A, Tamma BR (2016) Handover and SINR optimized deployment of LTE Femto base stations in enterprise environments. Wirel Pers Commun 88:619–643. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-016-3185-0

    Article  Google Scholar 

  63. Salman HA, Aldabbagh G, Taha Z, Ibrahim LF (2015) Topological planning and design of heterogeneous mobile networks in dense areas. The 2015 International Symposium On Mobile Computing, Wireless Networks, And Security(Csci-Ismc), under The 2015 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence, Las Vegas, USA. https://doi.org/10.1109/CSCI.2015.151

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors also acknowledge, with thanks, the Science and Technology Unit, King Abdulaziz University, for technical support.

Funding

This project was funded by the National Plan for Science, Technology and Innovation (MAARIFAH)—King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology—the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—award number (12-INF2743-03).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lamiaa F. Ibrahim.

Additional information

Publisher’s note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Ibrahim, L.F., Salman, H.A., Taha, Z.F. et al. A survey on heterogeneous mobile networks planning in indoor dense areas. Pers Ubiquit Comput 24, 487–498 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-019-01243-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-019-01243-y

Keywords

Navigation