Self-organizing femtocell offloading at the flow level

Femtocell technology is expected to be fully self-managed, empowered by self-organizing network functionalities. This paper proposes a solution for self-optimized offloading of macrocell traffic towards open/hybrid-access femtocells. A heterogeneous network comprising macro- and femtocells is modeled as parallel queues. The coverage area of the femtocells is self-optimized by dynamically adapting their pilot powers. A simple update equation for the pilot power is given and its convergence is studied using stochastic approximation techniques. The algorithm balances the load among the cells to improve network capacity. Simulation results illustrate the important performance gains brought about by the proposed scheme, using a dynamic network simulator. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.