Frequency allocation schemes for supporting mobile TV services in 3G/4G networks

Frequency planning schemes in 3G/4G networks for supporting both mobile TV and voice/data services are presented in this article. To enhance the system capacity and avoid inter-cell interference, the soft frequency reuse (SFR) scheme can be utilized in 3G/4G systems. In the SFR scheme, the frequency reuse of 3 is employed to allocate the cell-edge band of a cell, while the remaining available spectrum is reserved for the cell-center band. In our proposed frequency allocation scheme, conventional voice/data services will have a higher allocation priority over mobile TV services. To improve the spectrum efficiency, multicast rather than broadcast or unicast must be adopted for mobile TV services. In our proposed scheme, the TV channels with only cell-center users can utilize any frequency bands. However, the TV channels with cell-edge users (may also have cell-center users) must use the cell-edge band and have a larger transmission power. Simulation results will show that our proposed frequency allocation scheme can achieve the higher spectrum utilization and the lower blocking rates.