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.     

Price‐based interference management in dense femtocell systems

Femtocell technology has been drawing considerable attention as a cost‐effective means of improving cellular coverage and capacity. However, under co‐channel deployment, femtocell system in dense environment may incur high uplink interference to existing macrocells and experiences strong inter‐cell interference at the same time. To manage the uplink interference to macrocell, as well as the inter‐cell interference, this paper proposes a price‐based uplink interference management scheme for dense femtocell systems. Specifically, on the one hand, to guarantee the macrocell users' quality of service, the macrocell base station prices the interference from femtocell users (FUEs) subject to a maximum tolerable interference power constraint. On the other hand, the inter‐cell interference is also taken into consideration. Moreover, a Stackelberg game model is adopted to jointly study the utility maximization of the macrocell base station and FUEs. Then, in order to reduce the amount of information exchange, we design a distributed power allocation algorithm for FUEs. In addition, admission control is adopted to protect the active FUEs' performance. Numerical results show that the price‐based interference management scheme is effective. Meanwhile, it is shown that the distributed power allocation combined with admission control is capable of robustly protecting the performance of all the active FUEs. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

Robust uplink power control for co-channel two-tier femtocell networks

This paper is concerned with uplink interference suppression problem in two-tier femtocell networks through power control. Specifically, we consider the Quality-of-Service (QoS) of the macrocell user and femtocell users in terms of their received Signal to Interference-plus-Noise Ratios (SINRs) at macrocell base station (MBS) and femtocell base stations (FBSs), and we also take femtocell users’ power efficiency into consideration by designing an objective function, which is a weighted sum of transmission power and squared SINR difference between femtocell user's maximum SINR and actual SINR. Due to the error of the SINR at MBS caused by distance errors, a robust uplink power control problem is formulated, and it is equivalent to a robust convex optimization problem with femtocell users’ SINR constraints. Then, the robust convex optimization problem is converted into a general convex optimization problem. Moreover, a distributed power control algorithm combined with admission control is presented to obtain femtocell users’ optimal power allocation. Numerical results show the convergence and effectiveness of the proposed uplink power control algorithm.     

Interference Management with Block Diagonalization for Macro/Femto Coexisting Networks

A femtocell is a small cellular base station, typically designed for use in a home or small business. The random deployment of a femtocell has a critical effect on the performance of a macrocell network due to co‐channel interference. Utilizing the advantage of a multiple‐input multiple‐output system, each femto base station (FBS) is able to form a cluster and generates a precoding matrix, which is a modified version of conventional single‐cell block diagonalization, in a cooperative manner. Since interference from clustered‐FBSs located at the nearby macro user equipment (MUE) is the dominant interference contributor to the coexisting networks, each cluster generates a precoding matrix considering the effects of interference on nearby MUEs. Through simulation, we verify that the proposed algorithm shows better performance respective to both MUE and femto user equipment, in terms of capacity.     

An efficient handoff algorithm based on received signal strength and wireless transmission loss in hierarchical cell networks

Compared with the macrocell systems, the femtocell systems allow users to obtain broadband service with high data rate by using lower costs of transmit power, operation and capital expenditure. Traditional handoff algorithms used in macrocells cannot well satisfy the mobility of users efficiently in hierarchical macro/femto cell networks. In this paper based on the received signal strength (RSS) and wireless transmission loss, a new handoff algorithm in hierarchical cell networks called RWTL-HO is proposed, which considers the discrepancy in transmit power between macrocell and femtocell base stations. The simulation results show that compared with the conventional algorithm, the proposed algorithm improves the utilization of femtocells by doubling the number of handoffs; and in comparison with the handoff algorithm based on combining the RSSs from both macro and femto cell base stations, reduces half the number of redundant handoffs.     

Outage probability in Poisson‐cluster‐based LTE two‐tier femtocell networks

This paper analyzes two‐tier orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing (OFDM)‐based cellular structure, when the traditional macrocell structure is extended with femtocells. The benefit of using femtocells is the capacity and coverage extension capability. To fulfill strict quality of service requirements in next‐generation mobile networks such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) or LTE‐Advanced, capacity and coverage enhancing becomes rather important. On the other hand, adding small cells such as femtocells next to macrocell modifies the interference pattern of the current region. Therefore, the number of small cells in a given area should be limited. In this paper, we provide an analytic framework to calculate the outage probability for a macrocell user in OFDM‐based femtocell networks when the deployed femto base stations are composing an independent Poisson cluster process such as Thomas cluster process. Cluster‐based femtocell modeling offers accurate network planning for mobile operators. In this cluster‐based realization, we give an interference characterization and consider the outage probability for a randomly deployed user when communication channel is infected with Rayleigh fading. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pricing and power control for energy‐efficient radio resource management in cognitive femtocell networks

Cognitive femtocell has been considered as a promising technique that can improve the capacity and the utilization of spectrum efficiency in wireless networks because of the short transmission distance and low transmit power. In this paper, we study the win–win solution of energy‐efficient radio resource management in cognitive femtocell networks, where the macrocell tries to maximize its revenue by adjusting spectrum utilization price while the femtocells try to maximize their revenues by dynamically adjusting the transmit power. When the spectrum utilization price is given by macrocell, we formulate the power control problem of standalone femtocells as an optimization problem and introduce a low‐complexity iteration algorithm based on gradient‐assisted binary search algorithm to solve it. Besides, non‐cooperative game is used to formulate the power control problem between collocated femtocells in a collocated femtocell set, and then low complexity and widely used gradient‐based iteration algorithm is applied to obtain the Nash‐equilibrium solution. Specially, asymptotic analysis is applied to find the approximate spectrum utilization price in macrocell, which can greatly reduce the computational complexity of the proposed energy‐efficient radio resource management scheme. Finally, extensive simulation results are presented to verify our theoretical analysis and demonstrate the performance of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Distributed Resource Allocation in Two‐Hierarchy Networks

In this paper, a new distributed resource allocation algorithm is proposed to alleviate the cross‐tier interference for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access macrocell and femtocell overlay. Specifically, the resource allocation problem is modeled as a non‐cooperative game. Based on game theory, we propose an iterative algorithm between subchannel and power allocation called distributed resource allocation which requires no coordination among the two‐hierarchy networks. Finally, a macrocell link quality protection process is proposed to guarantee the macrocell UE's quality of service to avoid severe cross‐tier interference from femtocells. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve remarkable performance gains as compared to the pure waterfilling algorithm.     

Femtocell网络中基于双门限的两层协作频谱感知技术

在Femtocell和Macrocell构成的两层异构网络中,前人提出运用认知无线电的技术来解决网络中存在的干扰问题,但大多数研究主要集中在频谱资源的管理上,没有提出高效的频谱检测方法。本文结合认知无线电中频谱感知技术提出了基于双门限的两层协作频谱感知,检测出空洞的频谱资源分配给Femtocell用户使用,既能提高频谱资源的利用率,又能有效的抑制Femtocell与Macrocell之间的干扰。文中推导出了Femtocell用户基于双门限的两层频谱感知的检测概率和虚警概率,给出了Femtocell网络中感知信息两比特编码的融合准则和基于双门限的两层协作频谱感知的具体实施方法。仿真结果表明,所提算法能够有效提高Femtocell用户的频谱检测概率,通过对感知信息进行两比特编码,再将编码后的信息发送至融合中心进行融合,能够有效的提高整个系统的检测性能,抗噪声能力强。      

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。      

Interference Mitigation Using Uplink Power Control for Two-Tier Femtocell Networks

This paper proposes two interference mitigation strategies that adjust the maximum transmit power of femtocell users to suppress the cross-tier interference at a macrocell base station (BS). The open-loop and the closed-loop control suppress the cross-tier interference less than a fixed threshold and an adaptive threshold based on the noise and interference (NI) level at the macrocell BS, respectively. Simulation results show that both schemes effectively compensate the uplink throughput degradation of the macrocell BS due to the cross-tier interference and that the closed-loop control provides better femtocell throughput than the open-loop control at a minimal cost of macrocell throughput.     

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.     

ESPS scheme for two‐tier interference suppression in a heterogeneous network with cooperative femtocells

The coexistence of a macrocell and a number of femtocells often leads to a two‐tier heterogeneous network, where the co‐tier interference (CotIN) and cross‐tier interference (CrotIN) both degrade users' quality of service. In order to suppress these interferences, we propose a precoding scheme in a heterogeneous network with cooperative femtocells, called CotIN elimination and CrotIN suppression with precoding criterion selection (ESPS) scheme. In this scheme, we first eliminate the CotINs of each user by applying the QR decomposition to channel matrix. Then the CrotINs of macrocell users and femtocell users are suppressed via the macrocell base station (MBS) and femtocell access points (FAPs) with precoding criterion selection, respectively. By using the ESPS scheme, spatial resources can be efficiently exploited. In addition, our ESPS scheme requires little information exchange between MBS and FAPs without iteration and thus significantly reduces the implementation complexity. Furthermore, the robustness is increased through introducing the information of channel uncertainty into the ESPS when channel estimation or quantization error exists. The performance analysis for the ESPS demonstrates that the ESPS is practical in the heterogeneous networks. Finally, simulation results show that the ESPS can decrease users' bit error rates and increase their transmission rates. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cell Selection for Load Balancing in Heterogeneous Networks

The vision of advanced long-term evolution (LTE-A) project is set to ultimate increase of network capacity in heterogeneous networks (HetNets). In HetNets with small cell configuration, a considerable majority of user devices is eventually connected to the macrocell base station (MBS), while small base stations (BSs), such as femtocell access points (FAPs), are still without any user. This results in unbalanced load and reduces the data rate of macrocell user equipment (MUE). In this paper, a method is proposed for load balancing among FAPs, while desired throughput is achieved. The proposed method uses the estimated received signal strength from different BSs and adjusted pilot signals. Under the critical signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) condition, a list of candidate FAPs is prepared. The updated candidate list henceforth does not include the least visited FAPs, which in turn leads to lower unnecessary handoffs. Once the BS with the highest number of free RBs and the highest pilot signal power is selected, FAP allocates the RBs with higher SINRs (qualified RBs) to user. In the case of FAP unavailability, the algorithm compels users to connect to the MBS with adequate qualified RBs. The performance of the proposed method was evaluated under a variety of FAPs density, and the number and velocity of users in terms of throughput and Jain’s fairness index. The results evidence affordable improvements in the throughput and Jain’s index in comparison with other methods.     

Interference Management and Six-Sector Macrocells for Performance Improvement in Femto–Macro Cellular Networks

Femtocells are considered as a solution for indoor high data rate demands. Interference mitigation is a fundamental challenge in two-tier femto–macrocell networks. In this paper, we consider six-sector macrocell layout for reducing the co-tier interference in the macrocell network and cross-tier interferences from macrocell to femtocell network. As interference reduces, the whole of available spectrum can be used in each macrocell which increases the spectrum efficiency. We also consider interference-level algorithm to allocate resource for femtocell in which macrocell uses the whole of spectrum. In the coverage area of each sector, femtocell uses a portion of the spectrum that is not used by the macrocell users. This approach ignores the high co-channel interference from the macrocell network to the femtocell network and vice versa in each sector. Simulation results show that the proposed layout and interference management scheme reduce the downlink interference and increase the efficiency of the orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based femtocell and macrocell. Consequently, system throughput and outage probability are improved significantly.     

Energy efficiency optimization algorithm for heterogeneous NOMA network based on imperfect CSI

In order to improve the suppression capability of parametric perturbation and energy efficiency (EE) of heterogeneous networks (HetNets),a robust resource allocation algorithm was proposed to maximize system EE for reducing cross-tier interference power in non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) based HetNets.Firstly,the resource optimization problem was formulated as a mixed integer and nonlinear programming one under the constraints of the interference power of macrocell users,maximum transmit power of small cell base station (BS),resource block assignment and the quality of service (QoS) requirement of each small cell user.Then,based on ellipsoid bounded channel uncertainty models,the original problem was converted into the equivalent convex optimization problem by using the convex relaxation method,Dinkelbach method and the successive convex approximation (SCA) method.The analytical solutions were obtained by using the Lagrangian dual approach.Simulation results verifiy that the proposed algorithm had better EE and robustness by comparing it with the existing algorithm under perfect channel state information.     

毫微微蜂窝基站的自配置功率机制

为了解决分层网络中由于添加飞小区引起的一系列干扰问题,提出了一种飞小区基站的自配置功率机制。该机制首先分析了飞基站可能受到各种其他基站的干扰和引起对已有用户的干扰类型,然后设计了一个功率最优化问题,即在保证已有用户正常通信前提下最大化飞小区的系统容量,最后通过拉格朗日乘数法得到了功率自配置的最优解。仿真结果表明该机制对比于基于接收信号强度设置功率机制,有效降低了飞基站发射功率,提高了已有用户的吞吐量,减少了对已有用户的干扰。     

基于Q-Learning算法的毫微微小区功率控制算法

该文研究macro-femto异构蜂窝网络中移动用户的功率控制问题,首先建立了以最小接收信号信干噪比为约束条件,最大化毫微微小区的总能效为目标的优化模型;然后提出了基于Q-Learning算法的毫微微小区集中式功率控制(PCQL)算法,该算法基于强化学习,能在没有准确信道状态信息的情况下,实现对小区内所有用户终端的发射功率统一调整。仿真结果表明该算法能实现对用户终端的功率有效控制,提升系统能效。