Applying FDTD to the Coverage Prediction of WiMAX Femtocells

Femtocells, or home base stations, are a potential future solution for operators to increase indoor coverage and reduce network cost. In a real WiMAX femtocell deployment in residential areas covered by WiMAX macrocells, interference is very likely to occur both in the streets and certain indoor regions. Propagation models that take into account both the outdoor and indoor channel characteristics are thus necessary for the purpose of WiMAX network planning in the presence of femtocells. In this paper, the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is adapted for the computation of radiowave propagation predictions at WiMAX frequencies. This model is particularly suitable for the study of hybrid indoor/outdoor scenarios and thus well adapted for the case of WiMAX femtocells in residential environments. Two optimization methods are proposed for the reduction of the FDTD simulation time: the reduction of the simulation frequency for problem simplification and a parallel graphics processing units (GPUs) implementation. The calibration of the model is then thoroughly described. First, the calibration of the absorbing boundary condition, necessary for proper coverage predictions, is presented. Then a calibration of the material parameters that minimizes the error function between simulation and real measurements is proposed. Finally, some mobile WiMAX system-level simulations that make use of the presented propagation model are presented to illustrate the applicability of the model for the study of femto- to macrointerference. Copyright (C) 2009 Alvaro Valcarce et al.