Interference Management in Femtocells

Femtocells is a small base station antenna designed for home or small business environment. Femtocell allows its users to extend their mobile coverage area, especially where the mobile network coverage area is limited or weak. Femtocells connect its service through DSL or broadband via ISP. It supports from 2 to 5 users in each cell. The femtocell owners may choose their femtocell users through their mobile network operator "MNO". Therefore, femtocell service will reduce the number of macrocells since some of the existing users will connect to their femtocell rather than macrocell. Therefore, femtocells will decrease the traffic load on the macrocells and, in general, it will increase the performance of MNO network. A femtocell is sometimes referred to as a “home base station”, “access point base station”, “3G access point”, “small cellular base station” and “personal 2G-3G base station”. In this research, an overview about the femtocells concept and architecture will be introduced. The spectrum frequencies of femtocells will be discussed. Also, comparison between the femtocells technology and the existing technologies is going to be overviewed. Finally, a detailed discussion about the interference management problem and its recent researches will be discussed.