Ghost femtocells: A novel radio resource management scheme for OFDMA based networks

The femtocell deployment in 3GPP/LTE sets new challenges to interference mitigation techniques and Radio Resource Management (RRM). Traditional schemes are mainly designed for classical cellular networks while the ad hoc nature of femtocells notably limits the complexity of possible algorithms. Thus, efficient RRM schemes are essential for limiting the interference impact on end-user performance. The goal of this paper is to achieve effective spectral reuse between macrocells and femtocells while guaranteeing the QoS of users served by both macro and femto base stations. We propose a novel resource management scheme that limits the overall interference per chunk generated outside the coverage range of a femtocell while reducing the transmission power in each Resource Block (RB). Our simulation results show that the proposed RRM scheme enhances the energy efficiency of femtocells and improves both macrocell and femtocell throughput.