National Conference on Communications

A Review of Cognitive Femtocells for Green Cellular Communications

Edwin Mugume
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering University of Manchester Manchester, United Kingdom edwin.mugume@gmail.com Abstract The ICT industry contributes over 2% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and this figure is expected to top 3% by 2020. Mobile cellular systems are a major contributor to energy consumption because of their emphasis on capacity and spectral efficiency rather than energy efficiency. The long term effects of CO2 emission into the atmosphere have led service providers and members of the scientific community to start taking the issue of carbon emissions seriously. Soaring energy prices coupled with continued demand for high rate applications means that operators spend a significant amount of their revenue on energy. It is likely that governments will implement climate change policies that will force polluters to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon trading and energy taxation policies. Femtocells have the potential to significantly reduce the energy consumption of mobile cellular systems. However, they may increase interference on the network which compromises their intended benefits. This paper discusses the potential of femtocells as a green alternative to the macrocell network. It will also investigate the potential of spectrum sensing using cognitive radio to avoid or reduce both homogeneous and heterogeneous interference on the network. Finally, the potential of femtocell networks as a locally relevant solution for mobile operators in Uganda is discussed. Key words - femtocell, macrocell, interference, spectrum sensing, energy efficiency, green communications
I. INTRODUCTION

Peterson Mwesiga
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Makerere University Kampala, Uganda mwesigapeter@gmail.com which results into a high channel capacity according to Shannons channel capacity theorem1. In the cellular context, reducing the transmitter-receiver separation distance basically means reducing cell sizes. Ever since wireless communications began, data rates have continued to rise every year and the major reason for this trend has been reduced cell sizes. Indeed, over the last 50 years, reducing cell sizes has been responsible for a million-fold increase in channel capacity. Other major reasons include designing better modulation and coding schemes and better digital and analog signal processing techniques that allow smaller slices of the spectrum to be used [1]. Macrocells cover a significant distance depending on whether they are in rural, suburban or an urban setting. They give sufficient outdoor coverage but due to penetration losses, indoor coverage is generally poor. A typical macrocell has a cell radius of 200-500m in an urban area. This means that they provide insufficient signal strength levels to support very high data rates. On the other hand, microcells have a smaller footprint than macrocells and are intended for very busy areas where data and voice traffic is very high. Picocells are even smaller and are normally installed for indoor coverage especially in shopping malls, hotels and other business centers. All these base stations are very expensive to set up because of the associated initial investment costs of equipment, site lease and the subsequent maintenance costs. One solution that enhances data rates without significantly increasing costs is the new innovation called the femtocell.
II. FEMTOCELLS

Mobile subscribers continue to demand for high data rate services and this can be seen in the new cellular standards being designed in the industry such as WiMAX, HSPA, LTE, EV-DO, 3G and LTE all of which emphasize high data rates and spectral efficiency. The challenge is therefore to design more efficient networks to meet the required quality of service (QoS). This has made indoor coverage solutions crucial for operators the world over [1]. The most basic way of increasing data rates and increase frequency reuse is to reduce the separation distance between the transmitter and receiver. This ensures a high signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR)

Femtocells are low-power, low-cost and short range access points (also called home base stations) that are installed in homes or small office buildings to enhance indoor coverage for both data and voice connections. They use existing DSL or cable modem for the backhaul connection back to the switching centre of the parent cellular network. A femtocell access point (FAP) operates typically as a cellular network radio base station found on the macrocell network. Femtocells are simple plug-and-play user-installed devices which do not
1

Shannons theorem states that C = Blog10 (1+SINR) where C is channel capacity and B is the channel bandwidth.

require the subscriber to have any technical competence. They are installed in a totally ad hoc manner independent of any input from the operator. This renders centralized frequency planning by the operator inapplicable which results into a high risk of interference [1]. However, due to the proximity between the transmitter and receiver, link quality is normally very good. This results in a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) that ensures high capacity. In addition, mobile equipment battery life is maximized due to low transmitted power on the uplink. The motivation for femtocells stems partly from the fact that in the near future, over 50% of all voice calls and at least 70% of data traffic will originate indoors [1], [2]. Current femtocell designs support 24 active subscribers in a home or 8-16 subscribers in an office environment. It can be applied to all standards including GSM, LTE, WiMAX and WCDMA. In 3GPP terminology, a 3G femtocell is called a Home NodeB (HNB) while a LTE femtocell is called a Home eNodeB (HeNB). Currently, it is challenging and expensive for operators to provide quality indoor coverage mainly due to indoor penetration loss. 3G and LTE technologies suffer even more because of operating at higher frequencies which means that subscribers do not get quality indoor coverage to enjoy the full capacity of such technologies. In order to provide reliable indoor coverage, operators would have to increase the number of macrocells and possibly add microcells and picocells to patch up any dead spaces left. While this increases frequency reuse and spectral efficiency, it sends operating costs soaring because of the involved costs of site lease/acquisition, initial investment in radio equipment, maintenance and running costs like electricity, security etc. It is estimated that a typical urban macrocell costs upwards of $1,000/month in such costs [1]. Femtocells present a cheap and reliable alternative as an indoor coverage solution. A FAP typically costs around $100 and is normally subsidized by the operator. It consumes very little power during transmit/receive and can be designed to sleep during periods of inactivity, further increasing energy savings. Femtocells relieve macrocells of indoor mobile users enabling the operator to concentrate resources on those truly mobile outdoor users. It is also cost effective in the sense that operators reduce on the number of macro/micro/picocells required to provide the same quality of indoor coverage. It reduces subscriber turnover (churn rate) because customers have access to a high quality of service (QoS). Most importantly, especially towards this paper, femtocells consume little power by design which enhances energy efficiency. Estimates show that by 2012, there will be around 150 million office or home femtocell customers being served by over 70 million FAPs [1], [2]. However, as is normally the case, this technology faces several challenges that can hamper its wide deployment. The quality of the backhaul connection is important because it has the potential to compromise the benefits of the FAP air interface. The femtocell shares the broadband connection with other data and this can potentially reduce the QoS. The femtocell and parent network must be tightly timesynchronized to avoid a large carrier offset, minimize multiaccess interference and to support handovers [1]. 2

Handovers can be open access, closed access or hybrid. In open access, any mobile on the same network is allowed to handover to the femtocell as long as it satisfies the conditions for handover such as relative received signal strength from the macrocell and femtocell. While open access gives the best spectral efficiency and network quality, it can lead to a high ping-pong rate where handovers happen to and fro between the macrocell and the femtocell for short periods. It also does not guarantee access to the femtocell owner in case the all femtocell capacity is currently taken up by other users. In closed access, the owner configures the FAP to authorize which mobile numbers can handover to the femtocell via some kind of web application. In hybrid, some channels are fixed and dedicated to the home users while the others are dynamically used to serve both home and other users [1]. Perhaps, the major challenge facing femtocell deployment is interference. Femtocells are typically installed in homes or offices in a totally ad hoc manner without input from the operator. Installing femtocells over an existing macrocell network essentially creates two cellular network layers, the underlaid macrocell and the overlaid femtocell layer. Assuming that femtocells and macrocells use the same frequency band, cross-layer interference can happen between the two layers or co-layer interference can happen between neighboring femtocells. Significant interference must be avoided as it has deleterious effects on the performance and realized QoS [1], [2]. Energy Efficiency in Cellular Systems Mobile networks contribute a significant amount of the greenhouse gas emissions attributed to the ICT industry. For example, compared to digital TV broadcast networks, mobile networks consume much more power. Due to the increasing demand for high data rate services, operators are forced to increase the density of base stations and this, coupled with increasing energy prices, significantly increases the energyrelated costs without necessarily increasing revenue [10]. In areas where there is no grid power, operators have sought more efficient ways of running their networks such as using more efficient battery backup as opposed to using generators. In the mobile network, over half of the power is consumed by the radio access network (RAN) as shown in Fig. 1. Within the RAN itself, the power amplifier, transceiver idling, power supply system and the cooling system account for most of the power consumption. There is high research interest in the area of energy efficiency because of the significant cost savings and increased revenues that operators would realize. A lot of emphasis has been put on designing network architectures that enhance more green communications as well as designing more intelligent radio techniques that ensure that base station equipment and mobile handsets consume less power. Noise and interference management are very important in most wireless networks. However, previous noise and interference cancellation schemes emphasize high data rates and spectral efficiency as opposed to energy efficiency. In order to realize green communications, research efforts must be focused on those schemes that prioritize energy efficiency while achieving sufficient data rates and spectrum efficiency [10].

consumption of current power amplifiers by 50% while maintaining the same performance. Future systems will also see further energy savings on antenna systems, cables, etc. Radio Access Techniques for improving energy efficiency It is quite predictable that future systems will involve a dense deployment of femtocells alongside the existing macrocell network. Such a dense deployment means that the aggregate power consumed by femtocells will become very significant. Although subscribers meet all the energy costs of the femtocell, their energy consumption must be reduced to minimize greenhouse emissions. Two popular techniques include the implementation of power control and sleep mode procedures to further improve energy efficiency of femtocells. Deployment of femtocells alongside macrocells leads to femto-femto and femto-macrocell interference. In the cell edge, power transmitted on the uplink is high and interferes with other receivers. This deteriorates energy efficiency especially due to high packet retransmission rates. Intelligent power control schemes can be designed to reduce this interference problem and enhance their performance such as in [14]. Sleep mode procedures are intended to reduce the energy consumption when the femtocell is idle. Sleep mode procedures allow the femtocell to switch off its radio and associated processing hardware in a manner similar to schemes employed in ad hoc and sensor networks to improve their battery longevity. In [15], a novel sleep mode procedure is proposed and simulation shows that it results into approximately 37.5% reduction in the power consumed by the femtocell. In this technique, the femtocell is always off unless there is a user that needs to connect to it. Thus, the femtocell can employ an RF sensor to detect an increase in signal over a given threshold. Resource Allocation The radio spectrum is very expensive for operators who may not afford extra spectrum for their femtocells. Further, spectrum is not readily available and most of the usable spectrum has already been allocated in a fixed manner to other services. Therefore, operators must intelligently allocate spectrum to the femtocells so as to realize high spectral efficiency and maintain QoS. One approach of spectrum allocation is to divide the allocated spectrum into two bands and use one band for macrocells and the other for femtocells. While this orthogonal channel allocation approach eliminates all cross-layer interference, it limits spectrum efficiency in both bands and is clearly not desirable [2]. This paper will mainly focus on those techniques of resource allocation that are based on the concept of cognitive radio.
III. COGNITIVE RADIO

Figure 1. Electricity usage in a mobile network [10]

Energy efficiency studies have also considered the impact that cell size has on power consumption. With reduced cell size, more base stations are required and this linearly increases the power consumption. On the other hand however, power consumed by the mobile equipment reduces. However, simulation results show that a four-fold reduction of the cell size can result into a sixteen-fold increase in energy efficiency [11]. Femtocells are a more interesting technology to the green communications community because they provide energy savings both in hardware at the system level. A femtocell uses a compact low-power access point and does not need any cooling system. It also does not suffer cable loss because the antenna and radio equipment are in one package. On the other hand, conventional base stations must employ cooling systems to cool the equipment because it heats up during operation. Likewise, cable losses are inevitable because antennas are normally placed in the tower or roof top and the radio equipment are placed on the ground. A typical TVS 7/8 RF feeder cable common with GSM networks in Uganda has losses of about 3.88 dB and 5.75 dB for a cable length of 100m in the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz bands respectively [12]. On the system level, it is well known that transmitted power reduces exponentially with distance according to the equation d- where is the path loss exponent that depends on the propagation environment. In femtocells, the range is small (10-20 metres) which reduces the path loss and thus reduces the required transmitted power. In addition to increasing battery life, it improves the SINR and leads to high channel capacity. Conventional base stations must transmit high power levels to overcome the high path loss involved in long range propagation which increases their energy consumption. It was shown in [13] that joint deployment of macrocells and femtocells can result into energy savings of up to 60% in urban areas using the technology available today. The simulation results showed that operators with a large market share benefit more from this joint deployment and that those operators with smaller market can derive the same benefits through RAN sharing agreements for their femtocells. The paper also discussed and showed that with better equipment components in future, energy efficiency will be further improved. For example, the power amplifier consumes up to 60% of the energy required by a macrocell base station. New devices are being designed that can reduce power 3

The traditional fixed spectrum allocation paradigm where a fixed band is given exclusively to one licensee is very inefficient. Extensive measurements carried out in major urban centers around the world have shown that spectral efficiency between 300MHz - 3GHz has a high spatiotemporal variation but is generally poor. Most bands have spectral occupancy less than 25% which shows that while spectrum is as a scarce resource, it is also significantly underutilized [3]. This has led regulators and other industry players to consider a

different spectrum allocation paradigm where secondary (or unlicensed) users (SUs) can access spectrum when the primary (licensed or legacy) users (PUs) are absent. Whatever method is used to allow SUs to access these spectrum holes (or white spaces), the PUs must be protected from interference and they retain legacy rights to the spectrum. Thus, a SU must release the spectrum when a PU needs to use it. Cognitive radio (CR) has been proposed as one way of detecting these white spaces and it is a very attractive option because of its simplicity and ease of implementation [4]. In [5], CR is defined as a context-aware intelligent radio capable of autonomous reconfiguration by learning from and adapting to the communication environment. CR senses the spectrum and decides whether a PU is present or not based on a given criteria. There are several techniques of spectrum sensing including cyclostationary feature detection, waveform detection, matched filter and compressed detection. This paper will consider energy detection because it is cheap and easy to implement and has low computational overhead. The energy detector is non-coherent as it does not require any prior knowledge of the PU signal unlike the other techniques which are all coherent. The CR measures the energy on a given band and using simple binary hypothesis testing and a given threshold, it declares a white space if energy is below the threshold and vice versa [4], [6]. Energy detection has several weaknesses including receiver uncertainty and its inability to differentiate between PU signal, noise and interference. Receiver uncertainty is due to the random nature of noise and the fact that the threshold is set close to the noise floor. This leads to poor performance at low SNR. Regardless of these weaknesses, it retains a high potential for applicability in practical systems. Fig. 2 shows the steps of energy detection sensing technique [4]. The detected signal at the CR is x(t), n(t) is zero-mean AWGN, s(t) is the transmitted PU signal and h(t) is the corresponding channel gain. A decision statistic M is obtained from the measured signal and compared with the threshold . Using binary hypothesis testing, the CR either declares a white space (H1) or not (H0) with the following probabilities of detection Pd and false alarm Pf , thus [4]: Pd = Pr{M > |H1} = Pr{decision = H1|H1} Pf = Pr{M > |H0} = Pr{decision = H1|H0} Pm = 1 - Pd = Pr{decision = H0|H1} Pm is the probability of miss detection which results into interference to the PU. Therefore, it is desirable to maximize probability of detection which ensures that the PU is maximally protected from SU interference. On the other hand, probability of false alarm must be minimized because it wrongly declares a white space as occupied thus reducing throughput. However, both probabilities cannot be improved simultaneously because they have a contradictory response when varied with the threshold. Thus, false alarm rate is normally fixed and the detection rate is maximized. It should be noted that in practice, a high level of detection is required even if it comes at the cost of poor false alarm. This is because the PU must be protected at all times. 4

Figure 2. Energy detection procedure

A plot of Pd vs. Pf is the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) of a CR while a plot of Pm vs. Pf is the complementary ROC. These two plots are commonly used to show the performance of spectrum sensing in CR. Fig. 3 shows a complementary ROC of local sensing in a Rayleigh channel at different average SNRs. Sensing performance improves with average SNR as expected. Performance in an AWGN channel at an average SNR of 10dB is shown for comparison. Performance is much better in an AWGN channel because it is essentially flat as opposed to a Rayleigh channel which is characterized by a rapidly fluctuating signal due to multipath fading and shadowing. The simulation was carried out using the Monte Carlo simulation technique with 50,000 trials. The theoretical simulation is also shown and it matches with the simulated response. Cooperative Spectrum Sensing The performance of spectrum sensing is limited by the deleterious effects of multipath fading and shadowing. The PU channel may be in a deep fade or shadowed by an obstacle which causes the CR to make a wrong decision. Shadowing effects are generally manifested over longer distances and time intervals than fading effects. Shadowing also causes the well-known hidden node problem which affects system performance. Cooperative (or collaborative) spectrum sensing has been proposed to tackle the problems of shadowing and fading. Several CRs cooperate by sharing their local sensing information since it is unlikely that all CRs simultaneously suffer from shadowing and fading. This cooperation provides cooperative gain and by taking advantage of the spatial diversity of collaborating CRs to improve the required individual CR receiver sensitivity, solving the receiver uncertainty problem and mitigating shadowing and multipath effects [6].
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Figure 3. Complementary ROC showing local sensing performance in a Rayleigh channel at different average SNR

In centralized cooperative sensing, CRs send their locally sensed information via a dedicated control channel to one CR which acts as the fusion centre (FC). The FC determines which channel should be sensed by the CRs and after collecting the sensed information, it combines it and makes a decision which it communicates to the CRs via the control channel. The FC uses either soft or hard combining to process the received information. In soft combining, CRs send all the sensed information to the FC which increases the required bandwidth of the control channel. In hard combining, individual CRs make local decisions and send 1-bit (1 for H1 and 0 for H0) to the FC. This has the desired effect of reducing the required control channel bandwidth [6]. The FC uses the linear fusion rules OR, AND or Majority rule to reach a decision. In the OR rule, at least one CR must declare H1 for the FC to declare H1. In AND rule, all collaborating CRs must declare H1 for the FC to declare H1. In the majority rule, at least half the collaborating CRs must declare H1 for the FC to declare H1. The majority rule can be expressed more generally as k-out-of-N rule where at least k of the N collaborating CRs must declare H1 for the FC to declare H1. For most matters of practical interest, the OR rule provides the best performance as it minimizes the chance of causing interference to the PU [7]. Fig. 4 shows improved detection performance due to collaboration. It can be seen that sufficient collaboration makes performance in a Rayleigh channel better than local sensing in an AWGN channel. This is also a Monte Carlo simulation with 50,000 trials. Interference Management in Femtocell Networks It has been discussed in Section I that femtocell deployment creates a two-layer structure which creates resource allocation challenges. OFDMA has been proposed as a solution to manage the resulting homogeneous and heterogeneous interference because of its inherent ability to use noncontiguous channels. In OFDMA, the frequency band is divided into orthogonal subcarriers that are in turn grouped into subchannels. The challenge is then to allocate orthogonal subchannels to users on the same or different layers in a bid to avoid any of the two kinds of interference.
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Although orthogonal channel allocation removes cross-layer interference entirely, it is not preferred due to its spectral inefficiency. Thus, co-channel assignment is preferred where both femtocells and macrocells use the same band of frequencies. Using OFDMA femtocells with cognitive radio capabilities, interference can be minimized. The macrocell users are the PUs and have legacy rights to the channel while the femtocell users are SUs and must access the channel only opportunistically. In [8], a method based on fractional frequency reuse (FFR) is proposed. The whole frequency band is divided into frequency assignments (FAs) and adjacent cells are allocated different FAs; each FA has several sub-channels. The femtocell senses the uplink (UL) channel since it is likely that the PU will have a higher power in this channel than the downlink (DL) especially closer to cell edge. Both UL and DL transmissions take place in the same FA for a particular cell. The cognitive radio receiver senses the sub-channels and if a FA has some occupied sub-channels, the femtocell leaves that FA in order to protect PU DL and UL transmissions. If there is no free FA, the femtocell uses the FA with the smallest interference signature. The authors in [9] propose that CRs should be selfconfigurable and self-optimizing so as to easily fit into the network without degrading performance. At start up, the cognitive femtocell autonomously senses the channel and from this knowledge of the environment, it arranges the subchannels in their order of increasing interference signature. The femtocell then starts by allocating sub-channels with the lowest interference signature. In Fig. 5, the red spots show high interference channels while white spaces are subchannels which are free and can be used by SUs. The channels that show intermediate levels of interference can also be used when there are no free channels as long as they satisfy some criteria. Simulations on the DL of a typical urban macrocell show that a significant number of reusable subchannels would be available to the femtocell users. As expected, the available channels increase with distance of separation between the femtocell (fAP) and the macrocell base station (mBS). The simulations were based on the assumption that all macro users have a similar target SNR such that the mBS performs power control on the downlink.

Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Rayleigh Channel Using OR Rule

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Figure 4. Cooperative sensing performance in a Rayleigh channel with average SNR = 5dB for different number of collaborating CRs. AWGN case is shown for comparison.

Figure 5: Subchannels in 2D space are sensed and arranged in order of increasing reuse priority

Total Capacity of Femtocell Users [Mbps]

Fig. 6 shows a typical cell in an urban area with a cell radius of 1km. The location of the fAP is random within the cell but the femtocell users (fUsers) are fixed randomly within a radius of 10 metres from the fAP. The mBS is fixed at the centre but the macrocell users (mUsers) are also randomly located within the cell. The indoor channel model considered for the fAP and its users was the ITU-R P.1238 and the indoor penetration loss was assumed to be 12dB. The simulation considers 64 users, 512 subcarriers and a bandwidth of 20 MHz. It was based on the Monte Carlo simulation technique using 10,000 trials. The simulation calculates the number of reusable subchannels at a fixed location from the mBS, calculates the SINR in these subchannels and computes the total capacity of the femtocell. It is assumed that all reusable channels are allocated to four femtocell users. Fig. 7 shows the variation of total femtocell user capacity with distance on the DL considering the four users. The threshold level is assumed to be -105dBm. The threshold can be changed to obtain a desired detection performance. Note that there is perfect orthogonality between subcarriers and there is no interference from neighboring cells.
IV. CASE STUDY: UGANDA

Figure 6: Typical urban cell used for the simulation

Variation of Total Downlink Capacity with Distance from mBS (Cooperative Spectrum Sensing involving fAP and fUsers) 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

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Figure 7: Variation of capacity of femtocell users with mBS-fAP separation distance

In Uganda, operators are forced to run most of their sites on generators and battery banks because of a lack of grid power in most rural and sub-urban areas. Where the grid exists, it still becomes expensive to connect some sites which may be located far away from the grid lines. Also, grid power is not reliable due to load shedding. Rural areas are characterized by macrocells with a large footprint to provide wide coverage due to sparse distribution of subscribers and low traffic potential. This renders coverage poor in some areas especially indoors. However, operators are faced with high costs of site lease which, together with increasing diesel prices, ensure high operating costs (OPEX). Also, the low incomes of most subscribers mean that they are not willing to spend large amounts of money on mobile services. With the stiff competition that characterizes the mobile industry in Uganda, this limits the profit margin of operators which in turn reduces potential for further investment. However, subscribers demand and expect a high network even indoors. Due to low revenues, some operators have struggled to invest in their networks to improve the quality. Many dead spots can be found in hotel lobbies, conference halls, underground car parks, underground office spaces, large shopping malls and arcades, etc.
Locations of mBS, mUsers, fAP and fUsers (Downlink Channel) 1000 800 600 400

In residential areas, many subscribers continue to have poor coverage inside their homes. This clearly shows that macrocell base stations are few and far between to provide quality indoor coverage that the subscribers expect. Femtocells have the potential to solve these issues without significant need for new investment by the operators. They can be used to provide focused high quality coverage in business centers and homes with coverage gaps. The operator does not suffer any running costs since the acquisition, operation and safety of the femtocell is the sole responsibility of the subscriber. Depending on the business plan, the operator can subsidize or even offer the femtocells free of charge especially to home users and business enterprises that spend significant amounts of money on the operators services. Femtocells reduce subscriber turn over, help operators to maintain or improve their market share and enhance the QoS experienced by their subscribers. On the other hand, subscribers get access to a high quality service and enjoy data and voice services that give value for money. Femtocells have the potential for high usage in Uganda especially in urban and semi-urban areas. However, Uganda may not be prepared for dense deployment of femtocells because they DSL or cable modem for their backhaul. This is because the fixed line network in Uganda is very sparse and has few subscribers. The percentages of fixed line active users in comparison to the total number of registered users are approximately 78% and 65% for fixed copper-based and fixed wireless respectively2. However, the proportion of registered fixed line users is very small (with a growth rate estimated at about 1%) compared to the number and growth rate of active mobile subscribers. Not only do fixed lines provide a cheaper service but they are also an alternative to mobile telephony especially if the network is down or the coverage is poor inside a home. Thus, a significant effort is required to expand the fixed line network so as to take advantage of these advantages as well as enhance the potential of future femtocell deployments.

Y Position (Meters)

200 0 -200 -400 -600 -800 -1000 -1000 mBS mUsers fAP fUsers -800 -600 -400 -200 0 200 X Position (Meters) 400 600 800 1000

Obtained from Uganda Telecom Ltd

V.

CONCLUSION REFERENCES [1] V. Chandrasekhar, J. G. Andrews and A. Gatherer, Femtocell Networks: A Survey, IEEE Communications Magazine, 46(9), September 2008, pp. 59-67. D. Lopez-Perez, A. Valcarce, G. de la Roche and J. Zhang, OFDMA Femtocells: A Roadmap on Interference Avoidance, IEEE Communications Magazine, 47(9), June 2009, pp. 4148. Shared Spectrum Company, Spectrum Reports [Online]. Available from: http://www.sharedspectrum.com/papers/spectrum-reports/ [Accessed on15th April 2011] [4] Tevfik Yucek and Huseyin Arslan, A survey of Spectrum Sensing Algorithms for Cognitive Radio Applications, IEEE Communications Surveys Tutorials, 11(1), 2009, pp. 116-130. Q. Zhao, A. Swami, A Survey of Dynamic Spectrum Access: Signal Processing and Networking Perspectives, IEEE Int. Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Vol 4, 2007. Ian A. Akyildiz, Brandon. F. Lo, and R. Balakrishnan, Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks, Physical Communication Journal, Volume 4, 2011, pp. 40-62. Khaled B. Letaief and Wei Zhang, Cooperative Communication for Cognitive Radio Networks, Proc. IEEE 97(5), May 2009, pp. 878-893. D. Chan, H. C. Lee and Y. H. Lee, Cognitive Radio Based Femtocell Resource Allocation, IEEE Int. Conference on Information and Communication Technology Convergence (ICTC), 2010, pp. 274 279. Y. Y. Li, M. Macuha, E. S. Sousa, T. Sato and M. Nanri, Cognitive Interference Management in 3G Femtocells, IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, September 2009, pp. 1118-1122. J. He, P. Loskot, T. OFarrell, V. Friderikos, S. Armour and J. Thompson, Energy Efficient Architectures and Techniques for Green Radio Access Networks, IEEE Int. Conference on Communications and Networking in China, 2010, pp. 1-6. B. Badic, T. OFarrell, P. Loskot and J. He, Energy Efficient Radio Access Architectures for Green Radio: Large versus Small Cell Size Deployment, IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, 2009. TVS Interconnect Systems Ltd [Online]. Available at http://www.tvsics.com/dataSheet/RFCABLES.pdf [Accessed on 22nd June 2011] H. Claussen, L. T. Ho, and F. Pivit, Effects of Joint Macrocell and Residential Deployment on the Network Energy Efficiency, IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, 2008, pp.1-6. I. Guvenc, M. R. Jeong, F. Watanabe, H. Inamura, Femtocell Channel Assignment and Power Control for Improved Femtocell Coverage and Efficient Cell Search, US Patent 0291690 A1, November 2009. I. Ashraf, L. Ho and H. Claussen, Improving Energy Efficiency of Femtocell Base Stations via User Activity Detection, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, 2010, pp. 1-5.

The complementary technologies of femtocell and cognitive radio have a huge potential to revolutionize future mobile communications around the world by improving spectrum utilization and enhancing data rates beyond what is possible today. Femtocells are already popular in North America and there is huge interest developing in most of Europe. As the technologies continue to evolve, researchers hope to tap into the unique capabilities of cognitive radio to combat potential interference in femtocell networks. Femtocells have a huge potential to enhance the green communications effort. Green communications has become an area of major interest in the research community because of the need to reduce the total contribution of communications to the total greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. In Ugandas case, femtocells can go a long way in enhancing indoor coverage that is insufficient in many homes, offices, hotels, places of entertainment, etc. Such a solution will save operators a lot of money that would otherwise have been used to set up more macrocell and microcell base stations to provide the required indoor coverage signal levels. However, because femtocells use DSL or cable modems for backhaul, only those premises that are connected with fixed lines can benefit from this technology. Therefore, operators will target hotels, malls and arcades, government and business offices, and other such establishments. Fixed lines must be encouraged as they are crucial for future dense deployment of femtocells. Rural areas may not benefit significantly from femtocells because of the backhaul issue. The fixed line network is almost nonexistent in rural areas in Uganda. Thus, there would be a backhaul problem to contend with before any rural femtocell deployments can take place. While a dedicated RF channel can also be used for backhaul, it is undesirable because of the associated costs of transmission antennas, installation, etc and the need for line of site (LOS) to a nearby base station tower. In addition, the operator may have to buy an extra microwave band for transmission which is very expensive and may not be readily available. Since the purpose is to enhance network coverage and quality without significantly increasing costs of implementation, the DSL backhaul option is the most desirable.
VI. FUTURE WORK

[2]

[3]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

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[11]

The huge interest in mobile telephony has greatly limited the proliferation of fixed telephone lines in homes and offices in Uganda. However, operators who decide to roll out femtocells would mainly target home and office users. Therefore, there is a need to ascertain exactly how many fixed lines (active and inactive) exist in Uganda and the trend of subscription over the last few years. It is also necessary to identify any bottlenecks hampering the deployment and expansion of the fixed network and to identify new opportunities and services for fixed line subscribers. After such a study, it will be beneficial to suggest suitable policy interventions that can be implemented by the Government of Uganda, through Uganda Communications Commission (UCC), in conjunction with other major industry players such as operators, vendors, researchers and customers. 7

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