Multi-tone almost blank subframes for enhanced inter-cell interference coordination in LTE HetNets

Almost Blank Subframes (ABSs) are an important part of enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination in 3GPP standard. The concept of ABS is to blank some subframes of macro base stations (MBSs), therefore, PBSs can have no interference from MBSs during these periods. In this work, we propose Multi-tone ABS to enhance ABS, which is referred to single-tone since only two choices can be applied on each subframe. Our approach increases the spectrum utilization of MBSs, and also save much power compared to the original ABS scenarios. According to the simulation results, the proposed Multi-tone ABS reaches the following achievement: (1) The spectrum is a precious resource, and we increase the spectrum utilization. (2) We improve the performance of MBSs without harming the performance of PBSs. The capacity and the latency of MBSs are improved; (3) The power consumption of Multi-tone ABS is less than the original ABS scenario.