Indoor and Outdoor Femto Cells

Benefits of Transmit and Receive Diversity in

Enterprise Femtocell Deployments
Yi Jiang, Yan Zhou, Mohit Anand, Farhad Meshkati, Vinay Chande, Norman Ko and Mehmet Yavuz
Qualcomm Inc.
5775 Morehouse, Dr., San Diego, CA 92121 USA
E-mails: {yij, yanzhou, manand, fmeshkat, vchande, nko, myavuz}@qualcomm.com
AbstractIn this paper, we study the benefits of transmit and
receive diversity for enterprise UMTS femtocell deployments.
Indoor enterprise femtocell deployments face a single-path slow
fading wireless environment that may lead to frequent hard
handovers in the boundary region of neighboring femtocells and
consequent degradation in the voice quality experienced by the
users. In the absence of soft-handover (SHO) support, transmit
diversity at the femtocell can combat single-path fading channel. We
demonstrate through over-the-air tests that transmit diversity is
very effective in reducing the number of hard handovers and
therefore results in significant improvement in voice quality for
enterprise users. On the uplink, we study system stability using an
analytical approach. We derive analytical conditions for system
stability with and without receive diversity at the femtocells. Using
this analytical framework, benefits of receive diversity in
maintaining system stability and preventing uplink power racing
between neighboring femtocells are quantified. It is shown that, in
the absence of SHO, receive diversity is very effective in maintaining
system stability by preventing potential uplink power racing caused
by inter-femto interference.
Keywords-femtocells; enterprise; transmit diversity; closed-loop
transmit diveristy; handover; hard handover; receive diversity; system
stability; power racing.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Femtocells are low-power cellular base stations typically

deployed indoors in residential, enterprise or hotspot
settings.They offer multiple benefits to subscribers and operators.
To subscribers, they promise excellent user experience at home
(better coverage and higher data throughput) and access to
specialized femtozone applications. Operators benefit from
offloading traffic from macro cellular network and reduction of
infrastructure and maintenance costs through unplanned
deployments.
In this paper, we study the benefits of transmit and receive
diversity for commercial indoor multi-femto deployments (i.e.,
enterprise femtocells). In enterprise femtocell deployments, due
to the single-path slow fading indoor channel, a user equipment
(UE) may experience frequent hard handovers (HHO) when in
the boundary region of two neighboring femtocells1. Each HHO
can result in several consecutive frame erasures, which can cause
a noticeable voice artifact (NVA). Hence frequent HHOs can
lead to noticeable degradation of user experience. Inter-femto
soft handover (SHO) can mitigate this issue by providing
1

Since a large portion of UEs currently do not support Rx diversity, we

assume absence of Rx diversity at the UE throughout this paper.

978-1-61284-824-2/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

456

independent fading on each SHO leg and provide excellent voice

quality. In absence of soft handover support (e.g., due to its
implementation complexity), femtocell downlink transmit
diversity (TD) provides an effective diversity method for
overcoming the single-path fading channel. It is demonstrated in
this paper via over-the-air (OTA) test results that TD reduces the
number of HHOs and provides good voice quality for the
enterprise users. As an additional benefit, the closed-loop
transmit diversity (CLTD) provides coverage extension without
increasing the femto transmit power. There are also other benefits
of transmit diversity for femtocell deployment, e.g., inter-femto
interference mitigation as studied in [1] (and the reference
therein).
On the uplink (UL), receive diversity results in improved
uplink throughput and reduction in the femto mobiles transmit
power. Reduction in femto UE Tx power reduces inter-femto and
femto-to-macro interference. Inter-femto interference can
potentially result in power racing between the users served by
adjacent femtocells in an enterprise deployment. Specifically,
without SHO, a Femto User Equipment (FUE) in the boundary
region of two femtocells may increase its UL transmit power to
react to deep fades caused by single-path fading indoor channel.
The increase in the UEs Tx power can significantly push up the
UL interference to be above the noise floor at the neighboring
femtocell. Due to the high interference, the FUE served by the
neighboring femtocell will have to increase its transmit power,
which will result in UL interference at the other femtocell. As a
result, both FUEs enter power racing, hence increasing the noise
rise at both femtocells and interference to the macrocell. As an
effective solution, Rx diversity can be employed at the femtocells
to mitigate power racing by reducing the UL fading and hence
preventing sudden increases in FUE transmit power. To quantify
the effectiveness of Rx diversity, an analytical framework is
presented to identify the power racing condition. Based on the
framework, the femto UL performance with Rx diversity is
studied under various conditions. Numerical results show that Rx
diversity can significantly reduce the power racing probability.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In Section
II, we study and verify the benefit of transmit diversity in
reducing the number of hard handovers as well as in femto
coverage extension. Section III identifies the UL inter-femto
power racing condition and evaluates the effectiveness of femto
Rx diversity in reducing power racing. Major conclusions are
summarized in Section IV. The focus of this paper is 3G
femtocells using UMTS/HSPA+ technology.

II.

VOICE QUALITY IMPROVEMENT VIA TRA

ANSMIT DIVERSITY

A. OTA Mobility Tests without Transmit Diverrsity

In this section, we present over-the-air (OT
TA) test results to
illustrate that a UE at the boundary region of tw
wo femtocells may
experience very frequent HHOs.
Figure II-1 shows the layout of the OT
TA test performed
within a building in Qualcomm campus. The reed circles represent
two femtocells. In this test, the femto TD
D functionality is
disabled. A UE is placed at the boundary of thee two femtocells as
illustrated by the green circle. This location iss chosen such that
the UE has almost equal path loss from both fe
femtocells. The UE
makes an AMR 12.2kbps voice call through onee of the femtocells.

ny noticeable voice artifacts

frequent HHOs may cause man
(NVAs), which degrade the voicce quality experienced by the
user. For this enterprise building, about 20% of the enterprise
n where the UE can see at least
floor falls into the handover region
one additional femto within 4dB off the strongest femto.

Figure II-2 The OTA test logs of UE HHOs without TD

Figure II-1 Layout of the HHO OTA
A test.

During the voice call, UE may experience two ttypes of mobility:

i.
ii.

Conversational movement, e.g., thhe tester holds the

phone in talking position and with ssome regular body
and head movements.
Walking movement where the testeer walks back and
forth between two femtocells in a 4 meter range at
speed of approximately 1km/hr.

The HHO happens when the serving cell andd the neighbor cell
have Ecp/Io (the ratio of the received piloot energy to total
received energy, also called Common PIlot CHannel Ec/Io or
CPICH Ec/Io) satisfying [2]
E
I

CIO

E
I

hystteresis

(2-1)

SHO can address many of the issues arising in a single path

fading environment. The benefitss of soft handover are well
known. It helps a voice call in multiple ways, namely - (1)
providing diversity due to independent fades on the SHO legs (2)
providing higher DPCH (dedicatted physical channel) power
(each of the SHO legs can transmit the maximum allocated DPCH
power), and (3) eliminating servicce interruption artifacts due to
make-before-break architecture. Inter-femto
I
soft handover is,
therefore, a desirable feature thaat ensures smooth voice call
quality in a multi-femto deploymen
nt.
At the same time, SHO support poses additional
implementation complexity for enterprise femtocell deployments.
In absence of SHO support, anotheer source of diversity is needed
to prevent frequent hard handov
vers at the boundary regions
between neighboring femtocells. As shown in the following
sections, transmit diversity at the feemtocell is an effective method
for mitigating the impact of sin
ngle-path fading channel and
providing good voice quality for en
nterprise users.
B. Basics of Transmit Diversity

where CIO stands for cell individual offset off the neighbor cell,
and hysteresis term is determined by configuredd triggering event.
Figure II-2 shows the UE HHO behavior baseed on a typical test
log. Here hysteresis-CIO=3dB. The top suubplot shows the
filtered Ecp/Io traces of the two femtocells w
which have similar
average values. As seen in the plot, the Ecp/IIo values fluctuate
significantly due to the single-path fading chaannel. The subplot
in the middle illustrates the serving cell changes, i.e., the HHOs.
We see from the log that 9 HHO happens within 19 sec in this
test location at the boundary of two feemtocells. Several
consecutive frame erasures can occur duriing the handover
procedure as illustrated in the bottom suubplot. Therefore,

457

With 1Tx the CPICH received siignal code power (RSCP) is

given by
RSCP T

h CPICH

n,

(2-2)

where is the channel gain between the femto antenna 1 and the
PICH power by antenna 1. For
UE, and CPICH1 is the transmit CP
a femto with TD, either the spacee-time TD (STTD) or closedloop TD (CLTD) [3], two ortho
ogonal CPICH sequences are
transmitted simultaneously [3]. Thee RSCP can be written as
RSCPTD

CH
CPIC

CPICH

n,

(2-3)

where CPICH and CPICH are orthogonal sequences and 2 in

the denominator accounts for the transmission power reduction
on each antenna so that the total transmit power remains the same
as the 1Tx case. It is clear that the CPICH Ec/Io for the 1Tx
system follows:
E

| |

(2-4)

For the CPICH Ec/Io measurement of the TD system, the two

CPICH channel qualities are measured separately and the final
CPICH Ec/Io measurement is the combination of the two [4].
Hence for TD, the CPICH Ec/Io follows:
E

TD

(2-5)

Suppose the two transmit antennas have independent channel

fading. It is clear from comparing (2-4) and (2-5) that with TD,
CPICH Ec/Io benefits from diversity gain over the 1Tx case,
although there is no beamforming gain since the mean values of
RSCPTD and RSCP T , are the same.
C. OTA Test of Voice Quality with Transmit Diversity

hysteresis is an effective approach to reducing the HHOs and the

associated NVAs, and achieving good voice quality
Table II-1 Number of HHOs per minute, 1 Tx antenna vs. TD

1Tx

TD

HysteresisCIO=3dB

HysteresisCIO=6dB

Conversational

30

11

1km/h walk

22

19

Conversational

14

1km/h walk

16

To conclude this section, we note that closed loop TD (CLTD)

can provide range extension benefits in addition to diversity gain.
CLTD, which relies on the feedback of beamforming vector via
the UL Dedicated Physical Control CHannel (DPCCH) from the
UE to the femto [3], provides both diversity gain and 3dB
beamforming gain (in practice, however, the beamforming gain is
less than 3dB due to the quantization of the beamforming vector
and the time-varying channel). Hence given the same channel
condition (measured by CPICH Ec/Io), the femto with CLTD is
less likely to reach the Max Dedicated Physical CHannel (DPCH)
allocation. This explains Figure II-4, which shows that given the
same CPICH Ec/Io, CLTD achieves better frame error rate (FER)
than 1Tx antenna.
Blue: 1Tx, Red: CLTD; DPCH Ec/Ior 10%
12
static test
converstational
fast movement

10

FER %

8
6
4
2
0
-20

Figure II-3 The OTA test logs of UE HHOs with TD

We now show the OTA test results with TD. The test setting is
the same as the test shown in Figure II-2 except that here the TD
functionality is enabled. The UE HHO behavior is illustrated in
Figure II-3. Comparing the top subplots in Figure II-3 and Figure
II-2, one can clearly see that the fluctuations in CPICH Ec/Io are
significantly reduced with TD. Consequently, the HHO is much
less frequent and so is the number of NVAs per minute.
Table II-1 compares the number of HHOs occurred per minute
with and without TD for different hysteresis settings. In general,
the presence of TD reduces the HHO frequency significantly.
Moreover, the benefit of HHO reduction due to TD is even more
prominent when the hysteresis is set high. For hysteresisCIO=3dB, the reduction in HHOs due to TD is about 30~50%
while for hysteresis 6dB, the reduction in HHOs due to TD is
about 80%. Hence combining TD with a reasonably high

458

-18

-16
-14
-12
-10
Average CPICH Ec/Io (dB)

-8

-6

Figure II-4 Coverage extension obtained by CLTD. CLTD can

operate at lower frame error rate at given CPICH Ec/Io. The circles,
triangles and squares represent OTA lab test results. The solid lines
are trend lines. Max DPCH allocation is 10%.

III.

UPLINK INTER-FEMTO POWER RACING MITIGATION VIA

FEMTOCELL RECIEVE DIVERSITY

On the uplink, to achieve the same frame error rate, Rx

diversity requires less average FUE transmit power by smoothing
out the fading. The reduced transmit power results in less interfemto and femto-to-macro uplink interference. Furthermore, in
multi-femto enterprise deployments, the single-path slow fading
nature of the indoor channel can cause inter-femto power racing
on the UL. Without soft handover, Rx diversity can be very
effective in mitigating power racing by preventing deep fades on
the UL. In the following sections, an analytical framework is first
presented to identify the power racing condition. Based on it, the
benefit of femto Rx diversity in terms of power racing probability
reduction under various conditions is quantified.

The above condition can be expressed in dB domain as

[g11 ]dB + [g 22 ]dB [g12 ]dB [g 21 ]dB

[ 1 ]dB + [ 2 ]dB
which states that power racing will happen if the link gain
difference is less than the sum of SIR targets. Therefore, the
power racing will be more likely to happen for FUEs near the cell
boundary. Furthermore, power racing can be mitigated by
reducing target SIR to make the condition less likely to hold.
Finally, the power racing probability for one Rx is given by

g g
prob of power racing = prob 11 22 1 2

g12 g 21

Figure III-1 Two-femto two-user model with FUE 1 and 2 served by

Femto 1 and 2, respectively.

A. Power Racing Condition with Single Rx Antenna

In this section, the power racing condition for the case of
single Rx antenna at the femtocell is derived based on a simple 2femto 2-user model in Figure III-1, where FUE 1 and 2 are served
by femtocell 1 and 2, respectively. Each femtocell has one Rx
antenna, and no inter-femto soft handover is assumed. The Signal
to Interference plus noise Ratio (SIR) of FUE 1 at Femto 1 for a
given channel realization can be written as

sir1 =

n2 is the noise power at each femto. The SIR of FUE 2 at Femto

2 can be derived similarly. Suppose the target SIR is j for the jth FUE, the transmit power to achieve the target SIRs is given by
the power solution to the following equations

sir1 = 1

sir2 = 2

where

to the i-th Rx antenna at the k-th femto. For simplicity, the

derivation assumes that the interference plus noise at the two Rx
antennas are independent and Gaussian.
Same as the single Rx case, the power racing will happen if no
positive power vector exists to achieve the target SIRs. However,
finding an explicit power racing condition is challenging for Rx
diversity case, since the SIR is not a linear function of transmit
power. Therefore, we resort to a SIR lower bound to characterize
the condition:

sir1
1

1 g 21 n2 1
(3 1)

g 22 n2 2
1 g 21 n2 1

(g11 g 22 1 2 g 21 g12 ).
g11 n2 2

The power racing will happen if no (finite) positive power vector

exists that solves (3-1). This corresponds to both FUEs
continuously increasing their transmit power as the power control
can never achieve the target SIRs. It can be seen from (3-1) that
the condition for no positive power vector is given by

g11 g 22
1 2
g12 g 21

(3-2)

459

p1 g11i
i
p2 g 21
+ n2

g ijk represents the channel coefficient from the j-th FUE

which can be rewritten in matrix form as

g
= 22
2 g12

sir1 =
i =1

pj

p1 g11
p = g
2 2 12

B. Power Racing Condition with Rx Diversity

This section investigates the power racing condition with Rx
diversity at the femtocell. Following the 2-femto 2-user model in
Figure III-1, the SIR of FUE 1 at Femto 1 in case of 2-Rx
diversity with maximum ratio combining is given by

p1 g11
p2 g 21 + n2

is the transmit power of the j-th FUE, g jk represents

the channel coefficient from the j-th FUE to the k-th femto, and
where

where the probability is over different channel realizations.

pg
2

i
1 11

i =1

(p g
2

where G jk = g

i =1

1
jk

i
21

+ n2 )

p1G11
= sir1
p2G21 + n2

+ g 2jk 2 .

Note that sir1 will become the actual SIR in case of one Rx. The
transmit power to keep the SIR lower bound as the target SIR is
the solution to the following equations

sir1 = 1

sir2 = 2 .

(3-3)

Similar to (3-2), the condition for no positive powers to solve (33) can be derived as

(3-4)

On the other hand, power racing will happen if and only if no

positive power solution can be found to maintain the actual SIRs
as the target SIRs. This implies that whenever power racing
happens, there is also no positive power vector for keeping the
SIR lower bounds as the target SIRs, which is a more stringent
constraint. In other words, if actual SIRs cannot achieve target
SIRs by varying powers, their lower bounds must be lower than
target SIRs as well. Therefore, (3-4) serves as a necessary
condition for power racing in case of 2 Rx antennas and will
reduce to the sufficient and necessary condition (3-2) in case of 1
Rx antenna. By comparing (3-4) and (3-2), it can be seen that the
power racing is less likely to happen with Rx diversity since the
gain ratio is less likely to become small in the Rx diversity case
due to the more stable effective channel gain G jk . Accordingly,

femtocell environment. The mitigation of power racing is due to

the fact that Rx diversity can reduce the chance of high FUE
transmit power by preventing deep fades in the link to the serving
femtocell. The impact of fading statistics on power racing
probability is studied in Figure III-3, where each propagation link
is assumed to have Rician fading with K dB power ratio of lineof-sight component to scattered component. Rx diversity with 0.6
antenna correlation is considered for this result, and both FUEs
have PL=65 and 75dB to the serving and non-serving femtocells,
respectively. It can be seen that the power racing probability drops
dramatically with a higher K factor since deep fades become less
likely.
0

10
Upper bound of power racing prob.

G11G22
1 2
G12G21

the power racing probability can be upper bounded by:

G G
prob of power racing prob 11 22 1 2 .

G12G21

Upper bound of power racing prob.

10

1
2
2
2

ant
ant, 0 corr
ant, 0.6 corr
ant, 0.9 corr

-2

10

-3

10

-4

10

-5

10
-20

-15

-10

-5
Target SIR [dB]

K = -inf dB
K = 1.5 dB
K = 3 dB
K = 6 dB
K = 10 dB

-3

10

-4

10

-5

C. Numerical Results for Power Racing Probability

In this section, the behavior of power racing probability is
studied based on the exact expression for 1 Rx and the upper
bound for Rx diversity derived before. The validity of power
racing condition is verified via detailed system-level simulations
which model inner loop and outer loop power control. The results
are not included here due to space limitation.

-1

-2

10

10
-15

The above upper bound will reduce to the actual power racing
probability in case of one Rx antenna.

10

-1

10

10

Figure III-2 Power racing probability behavior for different Rx

diversity configurations.

The benefit of Rx diversity in mitigating uplink power racing

is evaluated in Figure III-2, where the performance is compared
for different Rx diversity configurations including both 1 Rx and
2 Rx with spatial correlation of 0, 0.6, and 0.9. The 2-femto 2-user
model in Figure III-1 is assumed with both FUEs having PL=65
and 75dB to the serving and non-serving femtocells, respectively.
Rayleigh fading is assumed for each propagation link. It can be
seen that Rx diversity significantly reduces the power racing
probability. Furthermore, the similar performance for spatial
correlation of 0.6 and 0 indicates that Rx diversity still achieves
near optimal performance with antenna correlations typical to

460

-10

-5
0
Target SIR [dB]

10

Figure III-3 Power racing probability behavior for different Rician

K factors.

IV.

CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we study the benefits of transmit and receive

diversity at femtocells for enterprise femtocell deployments. It is
shown that with femtocell transmit diversity (TD), a UE in
boundary region of two neighboring femtocells experiences less
signal fluctuations and hence less frequent hard handovers.
Therefore, if inter-femto soft handover is not supported, transmit
diversity can provide good voice quality in enterprise femtocell
deployments. In addition to reducing number of HHOs, the
closed-loop TD (CLTD) can provide range extension as well.
On the uplink, Rx diversity at the femtocell provides improved
uplink throughput and reduced femto mobile Tx power. The
reduction in femto mobiles Tx power results in lower uplink
interference to macro and other femtocells. In addition to these
benefits, we have shown that receive diversity at the femtocell is
beneficial in mitigating UL power racing caused by inter-femto
interference in enterprise deployments. We have obtained the
power racing condition on the uplink and shown via numerical
results that Rx diversity can significantly reduce the power racing
probability. The effect of spatial correlation on the Rx diversity
gains is minimal up to an antenna correlation factor of 0.6.
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