Evaluating economical wireless switch size: Bigger is not always better

Historically, from a service provider's point of view, a wireless switch cannot get big enough. As a wireless switch grows in capacity (subscribers), it must reach further and further to more distant BTSs in order to feed the capacity of this growing switch. As the switch reaches further geographically, the cost of transporting the connections from the BTS to the switch increases. Is there some point at which, given a specific backhaul cost, a bigger switch that reaches any further is uneconomical? We present a methodology that can be used to evaluate the appropriate number of switches for a given geographic-sized network and their optimal size. This follows from analysis of many cases leading to some general conclusions.