Capacity of Cellular Uplink with Multiple Tiers of Users and Path Loss

With the emergence and continuous growth of wireless data services, the value of a wireless network is not only defined by how many users it can support, but also by its ability to deliver higher data rates. Information theoretic capacity of cellular systems with fading is usually estimated using models originally inspired by Wyner's Gaussian Cellular Multiple Access Channel (GCMAC). In this paper, the authors extend this model to study the cellular system with users distributed over the cellular coverage area. Based on the distance from the cell-site receiver, users are grouped as tiers, and received signals from each tier are scaled using a distance dependent attenuation factor.