Hybrid inter-cell interference management for ultra-dense heterogeneous network in 5G

Abstract

The Ultra-dense Heterogeneous Network (HetNet), which consists of macro-cells and pico-cells, has been recognized as a key technique to improve network performance. However, the increasing number of pico-cells also causes severe interference including inter-cell interference and intra-cell interference. Therefore, interference management has become an important issue in ultra-dense HetNets, and the traditional enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) scheme is no longer fit for the high density of small cells. In this paper, a hybrid interference management method based on dynamic eICIC and coordinated multi-point transmission (CoMP) is proposed. Firstly, a virtual cell is established based on the characteristics of ultra dense HetNets. Then, a novel joint dynamic eICIC scheme combined with multi-user beamforming is deployed to eliminate the inter-cell interference, and improve the throughput of virtual cell significantly without sharp decrease of throughput of macro-cell. Furthermore, a virtual cell based joint transmission scheme is deployed with a power control algorithm, which can obviously increase the spectrum efficiency of virtual cell edge. Simulation results verify that the proposed scheme can achieve better spectrum efficiency both at macro-cell and virtual cell edges, and the network throughput is also improved.