Non-Cooperative Inter-Cell Interference Coordination Technique for Increasing Throughput Fairness in LTE Networks

One major concern for operators of Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks is mitigating inter-cell interference problems. Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC) techniques are proposed to reduce performance degradation and to maximize system capacity. It is a joint resource allocation and power allocation problem that aims at controlling the trade-off between resource efficiency and user fairness. Traditional interference mitigation techniques are Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) and Soft Frequency Reuse (SFR). FFR statically divides the available spectrum into reuse-1 and reuse-3 portions in order to protect cell-edge users, while SFR reduces downlink transmission power allocated for cell-center resources to protect vulnerable users in the neighboring cells. However, these static techniques are not adapted to non-uniform user distribution scenarios, and they do not provide guarantees on throughput fairness between user equipments. In this paper, we introduce a non-cooperative dynamic ICIC technique that dynamically adjusts resource block allocation according to user demands in each zone. We investigate the impact of this technique on throughput distribution and user fairness under non-uniform user distributions, using an LTE downlink system level simulator. Simulation results show that the proposed technique improves system capacity, and increases throughput fairness in comparison with reuse-1 model, FFR and SFR. It does not require any cooperation between base stations of the LTE network.