Fractional Frequency Reuse Aided Twin-Layer Femtocell Networks: Analysis, Design and Optimization

Femtocells constitute an economical solution conceived for improving the indoor coverage, which are capable of achieving a high network capacity. In order to guarantee a high Spectral Efficiency (SE), femtocells have to reuse the spectrum of macrocells. As a result, the performance of both the femtocells and macrocells may suffer owing to the near-far effects. In this paper, we study a twin-layer cellular networks, where the Macrocell Base Stations (MBSs) employing Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) host the Femtocell Base Stations (FBSs). This paper investigates the design, performance analysis and optimization problems of this FFR aided twin-layer network. We firstly assume that the femtocells opt for full spectrum access (FSA). The per-layer outage probability (OP) is derived and the network is optimized for maximizing the macrocell´s throughput. We found that the advantage of FFR eroded in dense femtocell-scenarios and the optimized network tends to become a Unity Frequency Reuse (UFR) aided system. We then propose a spectrum swapping access (SSA) strategy for protecting the macrocell´s performance and for overcoming the typical near-far problem. Our analysis demonstrates that both the OP of femtocell users in the Cell Centre Region (CCR) and that of the macrocell users in the Cell Edge Region (CER) will be reduced by the proposed SSA. The optimized network using our SSA is more robust to the detrimental impact of femtocells.