Radio resource allocation for interference management in mobile broadband OFDMA based networks

This paper focuses on the inter‐cell interference (ICI) management problem in the downlink channel for mobile broadband wireless OFDMA‐based systems. This subject is addressed from the standpoint of different interrelated resource allocation mechanisms operating in multi‐cell scenarios in order to exploit frequency and multi‐user diversity: ICI coordination/avoidance and adaptive subcarrier and power allocation. Even though these methods can be applied in a stand‐alone way, a significant performance improvement is achieved if they are jointly designed and operate in a combined basis. Several alternatives for mixed frequency and power ICI coordination schemes are proposed in this paper. Connected with a proper power mask‐based design, the potential gain of a flexible frequency sectorization solution, halfway between fractional/soft frequency reuse and pure frequency sectorization, is explored. The main objective is to outperform fractional/soft frequency reuse offering an attractive trade‐off between cell‐edge user data rates and average cell throughput. Proposals concerning ICI coordination/avoidance have been evaluated in combination with several heuristic adaptive subcarrier and power allocation algorithms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.