The deployment of hot spot wireless LANs to enhance the performance of 3G cellular networks

Abstract

HIPERLAN/2 is a European-standard high-speed wireless local area network (WLAN) operating in the 5 GHz band. In order to support broadband multimedia communications, it can provide data rates up to 54 Mbit/s over a range of up to 100 metres. The HIPERLAN/2 standard specifies a flexible radio-access network that can be used with a variety of core networks, including UMTS. It is likely that HIPERLAN/2 will become an important complementary technology to 3G cellular systems and typically used to provide 'hot-spot' coverage. In this paper, work performed under the framework of the IST ROMANTIK project for the use of HIPERLAN/2 in conjunction with UMTS is presented. In order to quantify the capacity enhancement benefits offered to a cellular network by wireless LAN technology, novel ray-tracing, software-simulated physical layer performance results and optimal base-station deployment analyses have been applied to internetworking. The analysis focuses on the deployment of key lamppost mounted wireless LAN access points to increase the performance (in terms of capacity) of a cellular network.