Physical cell identity reservation for 3GPP LTE femtocell

Femtocell as home base station for extending indoor coverage is introduced recently. The most important requirement of femtocell networks is to maintain self-configuration and self-optimization. User Equipment (UE) is needed to search autonomously the femtocells to reduce costs. In this paper, we propose Physical Cell identities (PCI) reservation scheme for 3GPP LTE femtocell. Some part of the PCIs is reserved for femtocells. Using several reservation types, the different number of PCIs can be reserved in each type. A macrocell can change the reservation type depending on the number of active femtocells. Simulation results show that proposed scheme reduces the average delay to find out the detected cells. Also, it increases the network capacity within the same delay constraints.