Performance evaluation of static frequency reuse techniques for OFDMA cellular networks

The use of orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) in Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMax cellular systems mitigates downlink intra-cell interference by the use of sub-carriers that are orthogonal to each other. Inter-cell interference, however, limits the downlink performance of cellular systems. In order to mitigate inter-cell interference, various techniques have been proposed. This paper examines one group of these techniques, static frequency reuse. We present a comprehensive comparison of Reuse-1, Reuse-3, fractional frequency reuse (FFR), and soft frequency reuse (SFR), with varying input parameters, such as inner radius and power ratios. System simulation is used to evaluate the overall system performance in terms of throughput and SINR are evaluated. In addition to the overall system performance, cell-edge user performance, whose performance is severely limited by interference from neighboring cells, for each technique is also evaluated.