A movable safety zone scheme in urban fiber-optic microcellular systems

We consider an urban fiber-optic microcellular system in which a cigar-shaped cell consists of several microzones with their own antenna sites connected to a central station through optical fibers. To increase the efficiency of radio resources and reduce unnecessary handoffs between microzones, we propose a movable safety zone scheme. A safety zone is a virtually guarded area that does not permit cochannel interference. Outside the safety zone, cochannels can be reused. The safety zone can move under the condition that its user does not meet cochannel interference as he moves to an adjacent microzone. Considering user mobility characteristics in the cigarshaped cell, we analyze and evaluate the proposed system in terms of intracell and intercell handoff rates, blocking probability, intracell call-dropping probability, and channel reuse parameter. The proposed system can handle a traffic capacity of about 12 Erlangs for seven traffic channels under a call blocking probability of 1 % and generates a negligible number of intracell handoffs compared with those of intercell handoffs. Index Terms-Cigar-shaped cell, fiber-optic, intracell handoff, microzone, movable safety zone, urban microcell.