Small Cell Network Densification using a New Space-Time Block Code (STBC)

Abstract

With the exponential increase in cellphone internet traffic consumed by new generations of wireless devices, cellular networks face a critical challenge to meet this vast demand of network capacity. As well, the demand for higher data rates and the ever-increasing number of wireless devices led to rapid increase in power consumption and cost of operation of cellular networks. One potential solution to address these issues is to overlay small cell access points with macro cell base stations (BS) as a mean to provide higher network capacity and better network coverage. The major problem, which met the small cells densification, is the strong interference power from the adjacent macro cells. Hence, this paper proposes a new space-time block code, which can be used by outdoor small cell BSs. The small cells are equipped with two antennas and transmit three symbols via three time slots. The new code can cancel the overall interference that affects the small cell data transmission. The proposed code will increase the data rate of the overall network without sharing overhead data between the macro cells and the small cells, permitting the network backhaul to be free for data transmission only