Efficacy of coverage radius-based power control scheme for interference mitigation in femtocells

A novel coverage radius-based downlink power control scheme to mitigate interference in densely deployed femtocells is presented. A femtocell access point (FAP) self-update algorithm is implemented, which determines the coverage radius of the femtocell with respect to its farthest served femtocell user equipment (FUE). Based on varying coverage radii, a max/min function is used to adjust the downlink transmit power value of a FAP. System-level simulations are performed to compare the performance of the presented scheme with the existing fixed coverage radius schemes. Even though the proposed scheme results in better cross-tier signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) values, due to a low co-tier SINR it is found that the efficacy of adaptive power control schemes based on the pilot power of a FAP is less significant if FUEs are located close to the neighbouring FAPs in densely deployed urban femtocells.