Exploiting an Optimal User Association Strategy for Interference Management in HetNets

Abstract

Heterogeneous Cellular Network consists of low power Pico Base Stations (PBS) overlaid in high power Macro Base Station's (MBS) coverage area. Edge User Equipments (UE) of PBS are victims of interference from MBS. Almost Blank Subframes (ABS) can provide interference free communication for these UEs. However, existing techniques perform UE-BS association before ABS determination, which is suboptimal with respect to UE-BS association.We formulate the joint optimization of UE-BS association and ABS computation as a combinatorial optimization problem, which is NP-Hard. We suggest the use of Hungarian matching algorithm and iterative exploration of candidate ABS densities to discover the ABS that can minimize system blocking.