Improving the performance of cell edge users with fractional coordinated fair scheduling

In this study, the authors propose a fractional coordinated fair scheduling (FCFS) scheme for improving the performance of cell edge users in long term evolution (LTE-advanced) networks. To enhance the network spectral efficiency and reduce co-channel interference, they extend the inter-cell interference coordination technique for multi-sector cells. The sectors are coordinated in the sense that they are allowed to transmit simultaneously, if the neighbouring sectors co-channel interference is less than a threshold value. Accordingly, a coordinated scheduling scheme is proposed to transmit to a fraction of users, located in cell edges, with good channel conditions. The proposed scheme maintains fairness among the users using alpha-fair criterion. Furthermore, to reduce the computational complexity of the scheduling scheme, they propose a heuristic algorithm based on choosing an appropriate subset of users for scheduling computations. Performance evaluation of FCFS shows that the cell edge users´ throughput improves because of the spectral efficiency enhancement and interference reduction. Moreover, FCFS achieves a higher fairness index with respect to a non-coordinated fair scheme.