Inter-cell interference mitigation using the moving coverage boundary of cellular systems employing remote radio heads

In this paper, we propose strategies to mitigate inter-cell interference by using remote radio heads (RRHs) installed at cell edge areas. For conventional systems, all user equipments (UEs) located in the coverage of a macro base station (BS) are assumed to be scheduling candidates for the corresponding cell. This makes UEs located near cell edge areas experience significant inter-cell interference. The proposed strategies solve the problem by virtually extending the coverage area to be larger than the area where the scheduling candidates are located. The advantage of the coverage extension is mainly obtained from a concept of moving cell boundaries, which is realized by partially activating the RRHs in a time-division fashion. Based on the Monte-Carlo simulations, performance benefits of moving boundary schemes over the static boundary schemes are presented.