Cellular layout

Typically, in a cellular network the area to be covered(provided with wireless connectivity) is divided up into a regular shaped cells that tesselate with each other to cover the whole area. Typically, the area to be covered is divided up into hexagonal cells. A base station located at the center of the cell provides coverage to users within that cell. Each of the base stations is assigned a certain frequency band that is used to serve the users within that cell. In typical cellular networks, this frequency band is reused in other cells, provided that the same frequencies are not reused in adjacent neighboring cells as that would cause inter-cell interference. In order to improve the spectral efficiency, there have been proposal to adopt more aggresive frequency reuse patterns and address the issues of inter-cell interference through various interference management techniques such as interference alignment, coordinated beamforming etc.