Physical Cell Identifier Assignment in Dense Femtocell Deployment

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors deal with a mechanism of Physical Cell Identifier (PCI) assignment for dense femtocell scenarios within LTE/LTE-Advanced networks. After describing the need for femtocells in future Self-Organizing Networks (SONs), the problem is presented. The chapter discusses background information such as related works in this research field and current assignment methods. Subsequently, challenges are defined, and two mechanisms to assign PCIs are proposed. Both the mechanisms are capable of assigning collision-free PCIs and solving any future confusion events that may occur as the network grows in terms of the number of femtocells. To evaluate the algorithms, a model is described and simulation results for two different scenarios are presented.