Achieving a Frequency Reuse Factor of 1 in OFDMA Cellular Networks with Cooperative Communications

This paper addresses inter-cell interference mitigation techniques in OFDMA cellular networks. It compares the performance results obtained with partial frequency reuse in the outer cell and with a proposed cooperative scheme based on relaying of the users in the outer cell. The proposed scheme uses cooperative diversity via a relaying protocol between the source base station and the closest base station, therefore reducing inter-cell interference. Subcarrier and power allocation can be implemented in a distributed way in each base station. Numerical results show that the same average inter-cell interference is achieved with cooperation as with a frequency reuse factor of 3, whereas cooperation leads to a lower rejection probability and higher sum throughput at medium to high load.