Dynamic Fractional Frequency Reuse based on an Improved Water-Filling for Network MIMO

Abstract

In Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) systems, Inter-cell Interference (ICI) is a prominent limiting factor that affects the performance of the systems, especially at the cell edges. Based on the literature, Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) methods are known as efficient interference management techniques. In this report, the proposed Dynamic Fractional Frequency Reuse (DFFR) technique improved the capacity and cell edge coverage performance by 70% compared to the Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) technique. In this study, an improved power allocation method was adopted into the DFFR technique to reach the goal of not only reducing the ICI mitigation at the cell edges, but also improving the overall capacity of the LTE-A systems. Hence, an improved water-filling algorithm was proposed, and its performance was compared with that of other methods that were considered. Through the simulation results and comparisons with other frequency reuse techniques, it was shown that the proposed method significantly improved the performance of the cell edge throughput by 42%, the capacity by 75%, and the coverage by 80%. Based on the analysis and numerical expressions, it was concluded that the proposed DFFR method provides significant performance improvements, especially for cell edge users.