Abstract: This paper proposes a method to use smart antenna to small cell architecture.
Small cells equipped with smart antennas can offload traffic for nearby busy small cells
and balance system traffic load adaptively. These small cells also take advantage of space
division multiplexing (SDM). The proposed architecture can help improve user access rate
and system throughput, and reduce the number of small cells. Simulation results show
that, compared with existing schemes, the proposed adaptive algorithm can reduce the
number of small cells by approximately 30% while maintaining the required user access
rate and system throughput, thus reducing deployment costs and energy consumption.

Key words: small cell, smart antenna, self-adaptation, load balancing