Quasi-distributed uplink interference coordination in co-channel HSPA+ heterogeneous network

Co-channel heterogeneous network (HetNet) where the conventional macro cells are underlaid with some co-channel low power node (LPN) cells has been recently introduced into HSPA+ to satisfy the rapidly growing demands for improving system coverage and capacity. However, the severe cross-tier uplink interference caused by applying the heterogeneous deployment will inevitably limit the uplink performance in HSPA+. Thus, the uplink interference issues have become a critical topic in this area. In this paper, we propose a quasi-distributed uplink interference coordination (QDUIC) scheme based on non-cooperative game with local restriction to reduce the uplink interference in HSPA+ HetNet. The existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibrium for our proposed game are justified in detail. Furthermore, to achieve our scheme in practice, we develop a feasible implementation for practical HSPA+ HetNet system. System-level simulation results show that our scheme can not only mitigate the uplink interference level, but also save the uplink power consumption and enhance the throughput performance of HSPA+ HetNet.