Contention based scheduling for femtocell access points in a densely deployed network environment

The proliferation of new data intensive devices has caused an enormous burden on wireless systems. A femtocell network is a promising new technology developed to meet these demands. Since each femtocell network consists of uncoordinated subnetworks that work independently, the interference between subnetworks can result in a significant degradation of the overall network capacity. In this paper, we address the interference problem between uncoordinated femtocell access points (FAPs) and propose a distributed FAP scheduling scheme in a densely deployed femtocell network where FAPs interfere with each other. In contrast to previous works that have focused on dynamic power and frequency management, our approach focuses on time sharing through FAP contention. Depending on the outcome of contention, our method selects a winning FAP to be the sole user of the next time frame. The approach operates in a fully distributed manner with help from mobile nodes (MNs). To implement this scheme, we develop a new synchronous frame structure, which uses special common control channels. Through simulations, we observe that the proposed scheme doubles the network capacity compared to the legacy non-contending scheme, and could serve as the basis for future standards on femtocell networks.