Joint interference management in ultra-dense small cell networks: A multi-dimensional coordination

Abstract

Extensive deployment of heterogeneous small cells over existing macrocell cellular networks forms the Ultra-dense Small cell Network (USN). USN has emerged as a key networking architecture in 5G wireless networks. It can improve network coverage and boost system capacity. However, the dense overlapped deployment of small cells leads to a complex interference problem. In this paper, we jointly implement multi-domain interference management technology to mitigate interference, where we jointly investigate the OFDMA scheduling, interference alignment (IA), TDMA scheduling, and power optimization. We formulate the small cells' interference coordination problem as an overlapping coalition formation game (OCFG). OCFG can help to effectively perform IA. Based on this, we propose a distributed joint interference management (JIM) scheme. By using the proposed algorithm, each SBS can interact and self-organize into a stable overlapping coalitional structure and reduce interference from different domains, thus optimizing the tradeoff between the benefits and costs. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed JIM yields a performance improvement in terms of the system throughput, compared to others.