Frequency Reuse Techniques with a Distributed Antenna System

Abstract

The performance of cellular networks is strongly limited by inter-cell interference. In order to reduce this interference, several techniques have been proposed, e.g., the frequency reuse techniques and distributed antenna system (DAS). This paper investigates the combinations of hard frequency reuse (HFR) and soft frequency reuse (SFR) techniques with DAS in a unique cell architecture, which are called DAS---HFR and DAS---SFR, respectively. This paper analytically quantifies the performance of the downlink multi-cell for DAS---HFR and DAS---SFR in terms of the average spectral efficiency. This also shows, the most appropriate frequency reuse technique depends not only on the average achievable data rate inside the cell, but also on the guaranteed achievable data rate (the minimum achievable data rate which is necessary to be obtained regardless of geographic location). The results show that DAS---SFR improves the achievable data rate of cell edges in a multi-cell environment as compared to a DAS---HFR when frequency reuse factor 1 is utilized. The results also show that DAS---SFR significantly increases the system capacity as compared to the DAS---HFR when frequency reuse factor 3 is utilized.