Flow-level performance of intra-site coordination in cellular networks

In this paper, we assess the ability of intra-site coordination schemes to combat inter-cell interference in cellular networks. We first focus on the static scheme proposed by the 3GPP standards where coordination is always performed in hand-over regions. Through the analysis of a flow-level model, we show that this scheme indeed improves cell-edge throughput at low loads but may make the system unstable at high loads, due to the suboptimal allocation of radio resources. We then propose a dynamic scheme where coordination decisions depend on the loads of the different sectors. Results show that this dynamic scheme behaves like the static one at low loads, outperforms it at medium loads and preserves the stability region of the network at high loads.