A preset threshold based cross-tier handover algorithm for uplink co-channel interference mitigation in two-tier femtocell networks

This paper considers the co-channel interference mitigation problem and proposes a preset threshold based cross-tier handover algorithm for uplink co-channel interference mitigation in two-tier femtocell networks. The proposed cross-tier handover algorithm introduces a preset threshold cross-tier handover policy, which takes into account both the time-to-stay (TTS) of a macrocell user equipment (MUE)/femtocell user equipment (FUE) in a femtocell/the macrocell, and the received signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) at a femtocell access point (FAP)/the macrocell base station (MBS) in making a cross-tier handover decision for an MUE/FUE. A cross-tier handover decision is made by comparing the TTS of an MUE/FUE in a femtocells/the macrocell and the SINR at a FAP/the MBS with a preset TTS threshold and different SINR thresholds. The objective of the preset threshold based cross-tier handover algorithm is to increase the received SINR at the MBS/FAPs and thus improve the network performance. The performance of the proposed cross-tier handover algorithm with the minimum power transmission and the optimal power transmission is analyzed, respectively. Numerical results show that the proposed preset threshold based cross-tier handover algorithm can significantly improve the network performance in terms of the outage probability, user sum rate, and network capacity.     

An efficient interference mitigation approach via quasi‐access in two‐tier macro‐femto heterogeneous networks

Two‐tier heterogeneous networks, where the current cellular networks, that is, macrocells, are overlapped with a large number of randomly distributed femtocells, can potentially bring significant benefits to spectral utilization and system capacity. In a two‐tier network, the cross‐tier interference needs to be handled properly. Unlike the downlink interference, the uplink (UL) interference at femtocell caused by macrocell user equipment (MUE) has not been addressed sufficiently. When an MUE is located near the coverage of femtocell, its transmit power may cause UL interference to the femtocell receiver, especially for the closed subscriber group femtocells that share the entire frequency spectrum with macrocell. We propose a novel quasi‐access strategy, which allows the interfering MUE to connect with the interfered femtocell access point (FAP) while only via UL. It can significantly alleviate the UL interference at the FAP as well as its neighbors, in the meantime, benefit the macro‐tier. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An enhanced distributed power control algorithm for mobile femtocells under limited dynamic range and its convergence

This paper presents a distributed power control algorithm for wireless backhaul links of mobile femtocells by using the pilot’s information. Taking into account the limited dynamic range of transmitted powers, the SINR balancing of mobile (vehicular) femto base stations in their home macro base station and the load balancing among the macrocells are achieved by the proposed approach at the cost of exchanging some limited information among both macro and vehicular femto base stations. The algorithm is very beneficial especially in a high load heterogeneous network. Monte Carlo simulation results denote that the mobile femtocells can be uniformly assigned to the macrocells and the SINR balancing is achievable via the proposed scheme.

     

Interference coordination method based on graph theory in two-tier cellular networks

This paper studies an interference coordination method by means of spectrum allocation in Long-Term Evolution (LTE) multi-cell scenario that comprises of macrocells and femtocells. The purpose is to maximize the total throughput of femtocells while ensuring the Signal-to-Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) of the edge macro mobile stations (mMSs) and the edge femtocell Mobile Stations (fMSs). A new spectrum allocation algorithm based on graph theory is proposed to reduce the interference. Firstly, the ratio of Resource Blocks (RBs) that mMSs occupy is obtained by genetic algorithm. Then, after considering the impact of the macro Base Stations (mBSs) and small scale fading to the fMS on different RBs, multi-interference graphs are established and the spectrum is allocated dynamically. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can meet the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of the mMSs. It can strike a balance between the edge fMSs’ throughput and the whole fMSs’ throughput.     

Interference management in femtocell networks

Recently, smaller cells such as femtocells have been proposed to address the cellular coverage problem and provide a ‘greener’ solution to future high‐speed wireless access. On the other hand, interference is a serious problem that could impact the wide deployment of femtocells. The contributions of this paper are threefold. First, we focus on the trade‐off between energy efficiency and system performance. With realistic long‐term evolution system parameters, we have shown that femtocells can indeed improve energy efficiency of the network. However, this comes with a price—performance degradation due to interference, which is especially severe in densely deployed scenarios. Second, we propose a proactive approach to handover and access management in femtocell systems, focusing especially on the interference issue of closed subscriber group femtocells. Third, we propose an efficient data offloading mechanism for interference mitigation and mobility management, with the aim to avoid potential interference and save radio resources and signalling load in the network. Simulation results have been presented to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed schemes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

OFDMA femtocells: a roadmap on interference avoidance - [topics in radio communications]

OFDMA femtocells have been pointed out by the industry as a good solution not only to overcome the indoor coverage problem but also to deal with the growth of traffic within macrocells. However, the deployment of a new femtocell layer may have an undesired impact on the performance of the macrocell layer. The allocation of spectrum resources and the avoidance of electromagnetic interference are some of the more urgent challenges that operators face before femtocells become widely deployed. In this article a coverage and interference analysis based on a realistic OFDMA macro/femtocell scenario is provided, as well as some guidelines on how the spectrum allocation and interference mitigation problems can be approached in these networks. Special attention is paid to the use of self-configuration and self-optimization techniques for the avoidance of interference.     

Throughput and cost‐efficient interference cancelation strategies for the downlink of spectrum‐sharing Long Term Evolution heterogeneous networks

In a heterogeneous network (HetNet), small cells such as femtocells considered in this work are deployed jointly with macrocells. This new cells' layer, when added to the network, generates interference, which could hamper neighboring macro‐user equipment (MUE) and femto‐user equipment (FUE) transmissions. In fact, this interference results in degradation of the network performance. In this paper, we propose a downlink interference cancelation (DL‐IC) strategy for spectrum‐sharing Long Term Evolution (LTE) HetNet. This DL‐IC strategy aims to reduce the interference impact on users by optimizing their received signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) using new utility functions for both FUEs and MUEs. These utility functions allow relaxation of the cancelation ratios in order to reduce implementation complexity while maximizing SINR, QoS, and throughput. We support by different system‐level simulations that both global network performance and user experience in terms of total throughput and received SNR or link‐level throughput, respectively, are significantly enhanced. Throughput gains achievable by the new DL‐IC strategy can reach as much as 200% against a homogeneous LTE network without IC along with an extra 48% per additional femtocell base station against a basic spectrum‐sharing LTE HetNet without IC. These performance figures are shown to surpass those achieved by interference avoidance techniques using either power or frequency resource allocation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Co-Channel Operation of Macro- and Femtocells in a Hierarchical Cell Structure

In this paper, the feasibility of user-deployed femtocells in the same frequency band as an existing macrocell network is investigated. Key requirements for co-channel operation of femtocells such as auto-configuration and public access are discussed. Methods for femtocell power auto-configuration that ensure a constant cell radius in the downlink, and a low pre-definable interference impact on co-channel macrocells in the uplink are proposed. The theoretical performance of randomly deployed femtocells in such a hierarchical cell structure and the resulting impact on existing co-channel macrocells is analysed for a cellular UMTS network using system level simulations.     

Cost-Effective Frequency Planning for Capacity Enhancement of Femtocellular Networks

The femto-access-point, a low-cost and small-size cellular base-station, is envisioned to be widely deployed in subscribers homes, as to provide high data-rate communications with improved quality of service. As femtocellular networks will co-exist with macrocellular networks, mitigation of the interference between these two network types is a key challenge for successful integration of these two technologies. In particular, there are several interference mechanisms between the femtocellular and the macrocellular networks, and the effects of the resulting interference depend on the density of femtocells and the overlaid macrocells in a particular coverage area. While improper interference management can cause a significant reduction in the system capacity and can increase the outage probability, effective and efficient frequency allocation among femtocells and macrocells can result in a successful co-existence of these two technologies. Furthermore, highly dense femtocellular deployments—the ultimate goal of the femtocellular technology—will require significant degree of self-organization in lieu of manual configuration. In this paper, we present various femtocellular network deployment scenarios, and we propose a number of frequency-allocation schemes to mitigate the interference and to increase the spectral efficiency of the integrated network. These schemes include: shared frequency band, dedicated frequency band, sub-frequency band, static frequency-reuse, and dynamic frequency-reuse. We derive an analytical model, which allows us to analyze in details the users outage probability, and we compare the performance of the proposed schemes using numerical analysis.     

Dynamic Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access resource management for downlink interference avoidance in two‐tier networks

In two‐tier networks, which consist of macrocells and femtocells, femtocells can offload the traffic from macrocells thereby improving indoor signal coverage. However, the dynamic deployment feature of femtocells may result in signal interference due to limited frequency spectrum. The tradeoff between broad signal coverage and increased signal interference deserves further exploration for practical network operation. In this paper, dynamic frequency resource management is proposed to avoid both co‐tier and cross‐tier Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access downlink interference and increase frequency channel utilization under co‐channel deployment. A graph‐based non‐conflict group discovery algorithm is proposed to discover the disjoint interference‐free groups among femtocells in order to avoid the co‐tier interference. A macrocell uses the femtocell gateway for frequency resource allocation among femtocells to avoid cross‐tier interference. We formulate the optimized frequency resource assignment as a fractional knapsack problem and solve the problem by using a greedy method. The simulation results show that the average data transfer rate can be increased from 21% to 60%, whereas idle rate and blocking rate are decreased in the range of and , respectively, as compared with conventional graph coloring and graph‐based dynamic frequency reuse schemes. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhancement of Geometry and Throughput in LTE Femtocells Cognitive Radio Networks

The mutual electromagnetic interference among macro users and femto users is a challenge, when femtocells are deployed in LTE and LTE advanced systems. When the used femtocells have a closed access, the macro users, who are indoors or near to the femtocells, are prone to a severe interference from the femto access points especially, in the case of the universal frequency reuse deployment. A power control is an effective way to improve the macro users’ geometry at the expense of a drop in the femto users’ geometry and capacity. The concept of a cognitive radio is proposed, as a novel approach, to mitigate the interference and improve the macro and femto users’ geometry. The system is designed, mathematically analyzed, and simulated considering that the femto users are secondary users for the macro users. The macro users and the femto users’ throughputs of the proposed system are estimated. Comparisons among the universal frequency reuse, the power control, and the suggested approach are held. The simulation results validate the efficiency of the proposed system. The average of femto users’ throughput in the proposed system is better than the corresponding one employing the universal frequency reuse or the power control, even if only 20 % of the subcarriers are available to be accessed by the femto users. Moreover, the macro users’ throughput in the proposed system is better than the corresponding one applying the universal frequency reuse or the power control, even if only 40 % of the subcarriers are available to be accessed by the macro users.     

UMTS Multi-Service Uplink Capacity and Interference Statistics of Femtocells

In this work, the multiservice uplink capacity of single and multiple femtocells is given. The COST231 multiwall and multifloor indoor propagation model has been used to calculate the indoor propagation loss. Results show that the uplink capacity of a deployed femtocell will reduce by 2 % if two extra femtocells are deployed in the same building higher and lower of it. Results also show that the uplink capacity is slightly affected if there are several femtocells deployed in the buildings around the one at which the femtocell under study is already exists. It is demonstrated that uplink capacity is interference limited if the femtocell is deployed to serve the users in three floors. Results show that the uplink capacity will be interference and noise limited if the femtocell is deployed to serve the users in five floors. Finally, it is found that the effect of the interference due to the uniformly distributed users within the macrocell around the femtocell is insignificant.     

Clustering-based interference management in densely deployed femtocell networks

Deploying femtocells underlaying macrocells is a promising way to improve the capacity and enhance the coverage of a cellular system. However, densely deployed femtocells in urban area also give rise to intra-tier interference and cross-tier issue that should be addressed properly in order to acquire the expected performance gain. In this paper, we propose an interference management scheme based on joint clustering and resource allocation for two-tier Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)-based femtocell networks. We formulate an optimization task with the objective of maximizing the sum throughput of the femtocell users (FUs) under the consideration of intra-tier interference mitigation, while controlling the interference to the macrocell user (MU) under its bearable threshold. The formulation problem is addressed by a two-stage procedure: femtocells clustering and resource allocation. First, disjoint femtocell clusters with dynamic sizes and numbers are generated to minimize intra-tier interference. Then each cluster is taken as a resource allocation unit to share all subchannels, followed by a fast algorithm to distribute power among these subchannels. Simulation results show that our proposed schemes can improve the throughput of the FUs with acceptable complexity.     

毫微微小区中一种基于分组的资源分配方法

为有效解决毫微微小区间( Femtocell)干扰,采用分布式方式对毫微微小区进行资源管理。首先,对毫微微接入点( FAPs)进行分组。基于Lingo数学建模的思想,提出了一种解决分组优化问题的算法。该算法在使用分支定界算法寻找最优解的同时,通过建立单纯形表剪去偏离最优解方向的分支;其次,每组选择一个簇头为本组内FAPs分配资源,为此,提出了新的子信道分配方法,该方法根据干扰指示矩阵修正子信道分配的情况。仿真结果表明：和其他算法相比,提出的算法不仅能找到分组优化问题的最优解,并且效率更高;另外,提出的资源分配算法不仅减小了用户间干扰,而且提高了户间速率公平。     

Interference management with adaptive fractional frequency reuse for LTE-A femtocells networks

This paper presents a novel interference management strategy, to adaptively choose the best fractional frequency reuse (FFR) scheme for macro and femto networks. The strategy aims to maximize the system throughput taking into account a number of system constraints. Here, the system constrains consist of the outage constraints of two-tier users and macrocell spectral efficiency requirement. The detailed procedures of our proposed strategy are: 1) A reference signal received power (RSRP) based selection algorithm is presented to adaptively select the optional FFR schemes satisfying the outage constraints. 2) Considering the macrocell spectral efficiency, the optimal FFR scheme is selected from the optional FFR schemes at MeNB side, to achieve the maximum system throughput in two-tier femtocell networks. We study the efficacy of the proposed strategy using an long term evolution advanced (LTE-A) system level simulator. Simulation results show that our proposed interference management strategy can select the best FFR scheme to maximize the system throughput, and the FFR schemes derived by using RSRP-based selection algorithm can be the effective solutions to deploy femtocells in macrocells.     

分层异构网络中基于斯坦克尔伯格博弈的资源分配算法

分层异构网络中家庭基站与宏基站之间往往存在干扰,如何分配资源以获得高谱率和高容量、保证用户性能一直是研究的重点。为了解决这个问题,本文提出了一种异构蜂窝网络中基于斯坦克尔伯格博弈的家庭基站与宏基站联合资源分配算法,算法首先基于图论的分簇算法对家庭基站和宏用户进行分簇和信道分配,以减少家庭基站之间的同层干扰和家庭基站层与宏蜂窝网络的跨层干扰;然后建立了联合家庭基站发射功率以及宏用户接入选择的斯坦克尔伯格博弈,推导出达到纳什均衡时的家庭基站发射功率的表达式,并据此为宏用户选择合适的接入策略。仿真结果表明,该算法能够有效地提高宏用户的信干噪比（SINR）,家庭用户的性能也得到改善。      

Analytical evaluation of downlink interference mitigation in multi‐macrocell/femtocell networks with frequency & cell partitioning

In this paper, we propose an interference mitigation method to suppress the downlink interference in multi‐macrocell/femtocell networks, and analytically evaluate the interference mitigation and average rate performances. Specifically, the proposed interference mitigation method consists of three steps: frequency partitioning, cell partitioning, and sub‐band allocation. In the frequency partitioning step, the whole downlink frequency band is divided into nine non‐overlapping sub‐bands. In the cell partitioning step, each macrocell is divided into four macrocell regions and three femtocell regions for macrocells' and femtocells' communications, respectively. In the sub‐band allocation step, each macrocell or femtocell region is allocated a sub‐band to guarantee that any two neighboring macrocell/femtocell regions use different sub‐bands. Conducted simulation results show that the proposed method is effective in mitigating the downlink interference and improving the average downlink per‐channel rate in multi‐macrocell/femtocell networks. In summary, the major contribution of the proposed interference mitigation method is that the downlink interference can be mitigated without cooperation between macrocells and femtocells, while the full frequency utilization of the macrocell is achieved. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Simulation Framework for Evaluating Interference Mitigation Techniques in Heterogeneous Cellular Environments

Femtocells present an attractive solution for the improvement of a mobile network’s services providing better data rates and coverage. Since their deployment results to a heterogeneous network where two layers must utilize the available spectrum, issues of interference arise. A method to address this challenge, is investigating the locations of the newly installed FBS, and enforcing a power controlled transmission of all FBSs that achieves optimal and fair overall performance. Another option that becomes available in inter-cell interference cancellation (ICIC) macrocell environments, is utilizing the available spectrum to complete or partly avoid co-channel operation. In this work, we provide a simulation framework that allows the creation of custom, high configurable, user defined topologies of femtocells with power control and frequency allocation capabilities. It allows the investigation of the margin of improvement in interference when these methods are applied and may work as a decision tool for planning and evaluating heterogeneous networks. To showcase the framework’s capabilities, we evaluate and study the behaviour of custom deployed femtocells/macrocells networks and examine the cross-tier interference issues. Facilitated by the framework, we enforce and evaluate each interference mitigation technique for different femtocells’ deployment densities. Finally, we compare the results of each method in terms of total throughput, spectral efficiency and cell-edge users’ performance.     

TD—SCDMA系统中GPS失步对网络性能的影响

时分一同步码分多址（TD—SCDMA）系统中经常会出现全球定位系统（GPS）信号被干扰或者遮挡，导致搜索不到GPS卫星后同步失效的现象。长期同步失效会导致基站间出现定时偏差，定时偏差过大将影响手机搜索邻区、小区切换、DwPTS对上行导引肘隙（UpPTS）的干扰等。这些将进一步影响网络质量，造成切换失败、切换掉话、呼通率下降，严重影响用户在网络中的感受。研究发现GPS失步4码片（chip）以上时，网络质量出现显著下降；GPS失步10chip以上时，出现手机搜不到邻区；在GPS失步16chip以下时，DwPTS对UpPTS的干扰在GPS失步小区的第一、第二圈小区表现不明显。研究结果表明：为了不影响网络性能，TD—SCDMA系统允许的GPS失步最大定时偏差为4chip。     

Stackelberg game for backhaul resource allocation in the two-tier LTE femtocell networks

As one promising technology for indoor coverage and service offloading from the conventional cellular networks, femtocells have attracted considerable attention in recent years. However, most of previous work are focused on resource allocation during the access period, and the backhaul involved resource allocation is seriously ignored. The authors studied the backhaul resource allocation in the wireless backhaul based two-tier heterogeneous networks （HetNets）, in which cross-tier interference control during access period is jointly considered. Assuming that the macrocell base station （MBS） protects itself from interference by pricing the backhaul spectrum allocated to femtocells, a Stackelberg game is formulated to work on the joint utility maximization of the macrocell and femtocells subject to a maximum interference tolerance at the MBS. The closed-form expressions of the optimal strategies are obtained to characterize the Stackelberg equilibriums for the proposed games, and a backhaul spectrum payment selection algorithm with guaranteed convergence is proposed to implement the backhaul resource allocation for femtocell base stations （FBSs）. Simulations are presented to demonstrate the Stackelberg equilibrium （SE） is obtained by the proposed algorithm and the proposed scheme is effective in backhaul resource allocation and macrocell protection in the spectrum-sharing HetNets.