Performance analysis of reuse partitioning techniques in OFDMA based cellular radio networks

Reuse partitioning is a useful method for mitigating co-channel interference (CCI) in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based cellular environments. In this work, theoretical analysis of a series of reuse partitioning approaches is carried out, which contains the well-known Soft Frequency Reuse (SFR) scheme, the novel Enhanced Fractional Frequency Reuse (EFFR) scheme and two EFFR-derivatives, namely the EFFR-Advanced scheme and the EFFR-Beyond scheme. Based on the Carrier to Interference plus Noise Ratio (CINR) computation, we give the maximal cell radius and reasonable boundary definitions for division different user-type zones by using each of these reuse partitioning schemes. Through numerical evaluations, cell coverage and mean cell capacity of these schemes under two different propagation conditions are exhibited. The results show that the EFFR series can outperform the SFR and the conventional reuse schemes under any propagation mode. Furthermore, among all EFFR schemes, the EFFR-Advanced scheme with an adequate resource allocation may be the best solution for CCI mitigation, which can achieve not only the 100% cell coverage but also significant cell capacity enhancement.