Exclusion regions via handshaking protocol for inter-cell interference management

We study the definition of exclusion region through handshake control bursts. The RTS/CTS (request to send/clear to send) bursts that typically take part in the handshake between the radio transmitter and receiver are a perfect medium for sounding their surroundings. Therefore, they can be utilized for setting exclusion regions - geographical areas protecting the active receivers from interference. This combination is particularly interesting for low-cost interference management among indoor cellular wireless networks with no deployment coordination. We propose an interconnection of these principles, creating thus a synchronized protocol that defines the size of exclusion regions via interference prediction from received powers of RTS and CTS control bursts. Performance of the protocol is evaluated analytically for a setup with two links and full load and by the means of simulations for a higher number of links and variable load. Both capacity and fairness are higher than with uncoordinated deployment. Within the simulated scenario the results show that predicting the interference from RTS bursts is sufficient, leading to smaller overhead and no dependence on channel reciprocity.