Dynamic Clustering Framework for Multi-Cell Scheduling in Dense Small Cell Networks

Abstract

This letter proposes a novel graph-based multi-cell scheduling framework to efficiently mitigate downlink inter-cell interference in small cell OFDMA networks. This framework incorporates dynamic clustering combined with channel-aware resource allocation to provide tunable quality of service measures at different levels. Our extensive evaluation study shows that a significant improvement in user's spectral efficiency is achievable, while also maintaining relatively high cell spectral efficiency via empirical tuning of re-use factor across the cells according to the required QoS constraints.