Combining fractional frequency reuse with coordinated multipoint transmission in MIMO-OFDMA networks

This paper presents a systematic comparative study involving two fundamental mechanisms envisaged to play a crucial role in 4G networks, namely, fractional frequency reuse (FFR) and coordinated multipoint transmission (CoMP). A simulation framework is developed to assess the performance of the most relevant coordination schemes under different user scheduling policies while also revealing what are the corresponding optimum settings for the FFR component. Moreover, for one particularly interesting CoMP technique, namely, zero-forcing (ZF) precoding, a novel power allocation strategy is proposed that is shown to significantly enhance its performance. Simulation results serve to confirm the benefits of combining both techniques, FFR and CoMP, in comparison to non-coordinated architectures.