A New Cellular Architecture Based on an Interleaved Cluster Concept

Personal communications services (PCS’s) and future broad-band wireless systems are and will continue to be driven mainly by three challenging objectives: high-spectrum reuse efficiency, high-quality channels, and low infrastructure costs. We propose a new interleaved narrow-beam trisector cell (INBTC) architecture with a newly developed interleaved channel assignment (ICA) scheme to achieve these three objectives. Originating from the ICA scheme, we introduce the concept of interleaved cluster, within which a channel set can be assigned more than once. The INBTC architecture with interleaved clusters can enhance the performance of cellular/PCS systems from several perspectives. We demonstrate that to achieve highspectrum efficiency, specifically in the range of reuse factors N = 2–7, the INBTC system improves 3–5 dB at the 90th and 95th percentiles of signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) compared to conventional cellular systems. For a typical cellular environment, with a shadow fading standard deviation = 8 dB and an SIR requirement of 17 dB at the 90th percentile, the INBTC system can increase system capacity by 75% over current systems. Because the INBTC architecture can utilize the basestation equipment of current cellular/PCS systems, implementing it should be simple and carry no attendant infrastructure costs. Hence, the proposed INBTC system (the cell layout plus the channel assignment scheme) has significant potential value in future cellular/PCS systems, as well as in broad-band wireless applications.