Small Cells: Advantages and Disadvantages

This page explores the advantages and disadvantages of small cells, covering their basics and overall impact.

What are Small Cells?

Introduction: Small cells are low-power, short-range wireless transmission systems designed for both indoor and outdoor applications. Their primary purpose is to serve smaller geographical areas effectively. These compact cells possess all the essential features of traditional base stations (BSs) but offer a higher data rate for individual subscribers. They were introduced in 3GPP Release 9 specifications.

Small cells are crucial for high-speed broadband and low-latency applications in LTE-Advanced and 5G NR deployments.

They are essentially miniature base stations that divide a cell site into smaller, more manageable regions. Based on coverage range and capacity (the number of users served), small cells are classified into:

• Femtocells: Provide extended coverage for residential and enterprise applications.
• Picocells: Used for small enterprise applications to extend coverage and deliver high data throughput.
• Microcells: Used for smart cities and smart metro applications due to their higher power and larger coverage range.

Small cells are typically deployed in densely populated urban areas such as sports venues, shopping centers, airports, and railway stations.

Benefits or Advantages of Small Cells

Here are the key benefits of using small cells:

• Extended Coverage: They significantly extend the coverage of cellular mobile networks, especially in indoor regions, improving signal strength in areas where it’s often weak.
• Increased Network Capacity: By offloading traffic from macrocells, small cells contribute to a substantial increase in overall network capacity.
• Service in Weak Signal Areas: They provide cellular services in areas where cellular signals are weak or completely unavailable.
• Consistent Service in Densely Populated Areas: Small cells ensure consistent service in densely populated user areas by handling local traffic demands.
• Cost-Effective: Small cells are generally cheaper than traditional base stations, making them an economically viable solution for expanding network coverage and capacity.
• Efficient Spectrum Use: They make efficient use of the available frequency spectrum by re-using the same frequencies within a geographical area.
• Lower Power Consumption: Small cells consume less power compared to conventional base stations, contributing to more energy-efficient networks.
• Traffic Offloading and Network Efficiency: They offload cellular traffic, thereby boosting the network’s overall efficiency and reducing congestion on macrocells.
• Faster and Easier Deployment: Small cells are faster to deploy and easier to operate compared to their larger counterparts.

Drawbacks or Disadvantages of Small Cells

While small cells offer many advantages, they also have some drawbacks:

• Shorter Coverage Range: They inherently serve a shorter coverage range than conventional base stations.
• Limited Session Handling: They can handle fewer simultaneous voice/data calls and internet browsing sessions compared to macrocells.
• Higher Deployment Costs: Deploying a large number of small cells across a region can require a significant budget.
• More Expensive than Alternatives: They can be more expensive than alternatives like relays and repeaters.
• Technical Challenges: Integrating small cells can present challenges such as interference management, resource allocation, backhaul requirements, and multi-vendor Self-Organizing Network (SON) management.

Conclusion

Despite the challenges mentioned above, the use of small cells has increased drastically across the globe due to their ability to increase overall network capacity at low power and provide many other benefits.