Due to growing demand number of channels assigned to a

cell eventually becomes in sufficient.

Techniques for increasing the capacity:
A) Cell Splitting
B) Sectoring
C) Coverage Zone

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Improving coverage in capacity in

cellular system

1. Cell Splitting

Each new cell has its own base station with reduced
antenna height and transmitted power.
Increases the capacity as channel reuse increases.

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Cell splitting is the process of sub-dividing a congested

cell in to smaller cells.

New cells are smaller in radius (micro cells) and

installed between existing cell in a manner that channel
allocation scheme required to maintain the minimum
separation between co channel cells is not disturbed. (R
is reduced but D/R is fixed)

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Base station A is surrounded by 6 new micro cells. Smaller cells

preserve the frequency reuse plan. E.g Microcell G is placed halfway
between two larger stations using the same channel

 For microcells the transmitted power is reduced, new cells

with radius R/2 can be found by examining the received
power Pr at the new and old boundary and setting them
equal,

Pt1 R-n

&
Pr [at New cell boundary]
Pt2 = (Pt1/16)

Pt2 (R/2)-n

for n=4

Where

Pt1, Pt2 are transmitted power of larger and smaller cells base
station
n is the path loss exponent

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Pr [at old cell boundary]

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In Practice all cells are not split at the same time. So larger
and smaller cells coexist.
Large cells transmits high power where as smaller one low
power ,when they co exist channel assignment is complex.
If large power used by all cells then some channels used
by smaller cell may not be at sufficient distance from co
channel cells.
If small transmit power is used by all the cells, in larger
cell some part may remain unserved.
Solution
So channels in the old cell must be broken in to two
groups, one that cater smaller cell reuse requirement and
other corresponds to the larger cell reuse requirements.

 The two channel group size depends on cell splitting

process.

As demand grows it will channels in smaller groups will

increase and splitting process may continue till all the
channels allotted to smaller power group.
Antenna down-tilting focuses radiation energy focused
to ground to limit the radio coverage in a smaller cell.
Hand-off is addressed by Umbrella approach bigger cell
cater high speed traffic and smaller cell to slow user.

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In beginning of splitting process there will be fewer

channels in smaller power group.

2. Sectoring

In Sectoring R is kept fixed but D/R is reduced to

increase capacity. Sectoring involves two steps
Step1 : S/I ratio is increased by using direction antennas.
Step2 : Capacity is improved by reducing N (cluster size).

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In cell splitting R is decreased but D/R kept fixed to

increase capacity by increasing channels per unit area..

By using Directional antennas a given cell will receive and

transmit interference with only a fraction of available
co-channels.

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Step-1
To reduce relative interference without decreasing
transmit power, single omni directional antenna is
replaced by several directional antennas, each radiating
within a specified area called Sector.

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The technique for decreasing co-channel interference and thus

increasing the system performance by directional antennas is called
sectoring.
Channel in the cell are broken down to in to sectored groups and
are used only within a particular sector.
For N= 7, 120 sectoring the number of interferers in first tier is
reduced from six to two. (S/I increased from 17 to 24.2 dB)

 Reduced trunking efficiency ( ability to accommodate a

large number of users in limited spectrum) due to
channel sectoring.
Sectoring reduces coverage area of a channel so more
hand-off is required (but not a major concern as new
technology allows handoffs in sectoring without
intervention of MSC)

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Problems with sectoring:

More number of antennas at base stations are required.

3. Microcell zone concept

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Increased number of Hand-offs are required when sectoring

employed resulting in to increased load on links and MSC.
Lee gave concept of microcell for 7-cell reuse

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Cell is divided in to zones and zones are connected together

to a single base station and share the same set of radio
equipments.
Zones are connected by coaxial cable, fiber optic cable or
microwave link.
Zones and a single BS make up a cell.
Within a cell mobile is served by the zone with strongest
signal. Within a cell user can move between zones without
handoff as it retains the same channel. BS station simply
switches the channel to different zone site.
A given channel is active only in one of the zone and hence
base station radiation is localized and interference is
reduced.
Channels are distributed in time and space by all three zones

Advantages of micro cell concept over sectoring

No handoff is required when mobile travels within

zones in a celle as same channel is used within a
cell/zone.
While Cell maintains a particular coverage radius, the
co channel interference is reduced since a large central
base station is replaced by a several low power
transmitters.

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Antennas are placed at the outer edge of cell and any

base station channel may be assigned to any zone by
the base station.

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Each hexagon representing a zone and three together makes a cell.

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For N=7 , D/R=4.6 to achieve min S/I of 18 dB

In Zone micro cell system DZ/RZ =4.6
Where
DZ =Min. distance between co-channel zones
RZ = Zone Radius
For a DZ/RZ =4.6 geometry shoes that D/R =3
(where R=2 Rz)
D/R=3 corresponds to N=3. So a reduction in N from 7 to 3 ,
increases the capacity by almost 2.33 times.