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While the benefits of having Smallcells are evident, they introduce new challenges of their own. To name a few: geometry erosion, downlink dead zones, hidden nodes, excessive handover and explosion of neighboring cell information list. Composite Cell is designed to alleviate these problem introduced by Smallcells such that operators can fully benefit from the higher system throughput and capacity brought about by the Smallcells.

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Geometry Erosion

The figures below shows what happens to the geometry when femtocells are deployed in the same layer as the macro coverage. It is clear that macrocell coverage suffers from geometry erosion due to interference coming from the femtocells.

Hidden Nodes

Strong macrocell signal blinds the UEs from nearby femtocells. From the example below, UE is not aware of FAP1 & 3 near macrocell center unless a measurement is triggered by the network.

Excessive Signaling & Handovers

UE moving in and out of smallcells much more frequently than when there is only macro/micro/pico cells in the network. This excessive handover creates the signaling storm and results in higher call drop rate.

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Composite Cell Benefits

Composite Cell is a Smallcell deployment technology with the following benefits: