Interference management using frequency reuse and CoMP for LTE-advanced networks

LTE-Advanced employs Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Carrier Aggregation (CA), Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO), Co-ordinated Multi-Point Transmission (CoMP) and Relay Station state of the art techniques to significantly enhance transmission performance and extend BS service coverage. On the other hand, Femtocell, specified in 3GPP Rel-8, has the advantages of low power consumption, zero-touch PnP, low cost, coverage enhancement, mobile data offload, etc. However, the hybrid LTE macrocell / femtocell networks may have interference problems among femtocells and macrocells. In the literature, FFR (Fractional Frequency Reuse) and SFR (Soft Frequency Reuse) are two well-known frequency reuse methods to manage interferences. However, experiments results show that both FFR and SFR cannot achieve significant throughput and spectrum utilization enhancement. In this paper, we propose a hybrid dynamic frequency reuse and CoMP technique, DMFR, which is applicable to LTE macrocell / femtocell networks and is able to enhance both the cell edge and adjacent sector transmission performance through adaptive spectrum allocation, interference management and CoMP techniques. Simulation results show that DMFR outperforms FFR in terms of throughput and spectrum utilization.