Introduction Of Femtocells Research Articles

A fractional path-loss compensation based power control technique for interference mitigation in LTE-A femtocell networks

Introduction of Femtocells in heterogeneous network enhances the capacity, indoor coverage of the existing macrocell based network. It also allows high-speed data services for the multi-media application and software. However, in dense co-channel deployment scenarios femtocells cause severe interference to the neighbouring cells users. In this paper, a downlink-power-control scheme is presented for femtocell with no overhead signalling exchange with the macrocell. The femtocell adjusts the transmit power subject to home user equipment (HUE) measurements. The minimum level of transmit power is determined by the target Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) of femtocell user that is set according to the required Quality of Service (QoS) of the femtocell users. The system level simulations confirm that, the proposed scheme reduces the outage probability of the nearby macrocell user equipment (MUE) up to 16.7% compared to fixed power setting, while maintaining the spectral efficiency of femtocell users. Furthermore, the transmit power can be reduced by 52.6% which leads to power effective solution of the interference scenario.

Power Minimization Based Resource Allocation for Interference Mitigation in OFDMA Femtocell Networks

With the introduction of femtocells, cellular networks are moving from the conventional centralized network architecture to a distributed one, where each network cell should make its own radio resource allocation decisions, while providing inter-cell interference mitigation. However, realizing such distributed network architecture is not a trivial task. In this paper, we first introduce a simple self-organization rule, based on minimizing cell transmit power, following which a distributed cellular network is able to converge into an efficient resource reuse pattern. Based on such self-organization rule and taking realistic resource allocation constraints into account, we also propose two novel resource allocation algorithms, being autonomous and coordinated, respectively. Performance of the proposed self-organization rule and resource allocation algorithms are evaluated using system-level simulations, and show that power efficiency is not necessarily in conflict with capacity improvements at the network level. The proposed resource allocation algorithms provide significant performance improvements in terms of user outages and network capacity over cutting-edge resource allocation algorithms proposed in the literature.

Dynamic PCI assignment in two‐tier networks based on cell activity prediction

Physical cell identity (PCI) is used to identify each cell. However, with the introduction of femtocells, 8 bytes allocation for PCI cannot accommodate a large number of femtocells. The current solution in 3GPP Release 9 is to use cell global identity associated with PCI to resolve this problem. However, this solution may incur higher inbound handover failure. A dynamic PCI assignment based on cell activity level prediction is proposed. The system level simulation showed that the approach outperforms the existing approaches.

MIMO precoding and mode adaptation in femtocellular systems

Hierarchical femtocellular architectures have become popular recently because of their potential to provide increased coverage and capacity in cellular systems. However, introduction of femtocells might reduce the overlay macrocellular system performance due to increased interference caused to macrocellular users. In this article, two MIMO precoding techniques are considered at the femtocellular base stations (FBSs) to control the interference to the macrocellular users: precoding matrix index (PMI), and least interference (LI). With MIMO precoding, the limited CSI at the transmitter is the index of the precoder chosen from the codebook fed back by the receiver. The LI technique can be employed at the FBSs to maximize the macrocellular throughput, but it also results in significant reduction in femtocellular throughput. The PMI approach can maximize the signal power at a desired receiver, with minimal feedback. In this article, we develop algorithms that adapt at the FBSs between the LI and PMI schemes to increase both the macrocellular and femtocellular throughputs. We show that allowing for mode adaptation at each FBS improves the system performance when compared with using the same mode across the system, and a simple binary choice at each FBS can nearly achieve the optimum mode-adaptation performance. Analysis and simulation results in a multicell environment are presented to illustrate the improvement in system performance with the proposed techniques.

Revenue Improvement for Wireless Service Providers in Hybrid Macrocell–Femtocell Networks

Femto base stations (FBSs) are cost-effective choices for wireless service providers (WSPs) to provide better indoor coverage and capacity in cellular networks. With the introduction of femtocells, spectrum allocation among macro base stations (MBSs) and numerous FBSs becomes challenging. WSPs will allocate resources among hierarchical infrastructures to mitigate mutual interference and maximize WSPs' revenue from service provisioning. In this paper, we propose a channel allocation and service provision framework to help WSPs allocate resources and increase revenue. The spectrum allocation and revenue maximization problem is formulated as a convex problem, and a centralized method is proposed to efficiently solve it. We also propose a distributed algorithm called LD (based on Lagrangian decomposition) to achieve a near-optimal solution with low computational and communication complexity, which can be used when the system is on a large scale. The simulation results show that our scheme can significantly improve the system's revenue.

Combined transmit beamforming and channel-aware scheduling for interference mitigation in femtocells

The introduction of femtocells in mobile networks gives rise to new co-layer and cross-layer interference scenarios. To mitigate interference, several approaches have been proposed in the literature including, e.g., transmit beamforming (TBF), power control, and fractional frequency reuse. In this article, we present an interference mitigation approach that relies on a low-rate control channel between the victim terminal and the interfering femto access point (FAP). The proposed method combines both, practical TBF schemes and simple one-bit channel-aware scheduling algorithms. We show that the proposed method can be effectively used not only to mitigate interference among FAPs, but also to balance user rates in adjacent cells with small signaling overhead.

Ad hoc self-healing of OFDMA networks using UAV-based relays

Due to the demand for constantly increasing data rates, especially within LTE (Long Term Evolution) and LTE-Advanced networks, today’s mobile radio systems are operating more and more at their capacity limits. Consequently, techniques to compensate cell outage and cell overload situations are needed. Existing approaches to address these problems are typically static solutions and are accompanied by Inter-Cell Interference (ICI), like the introduction of femtocells. In this paper we propose an UAV-based (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) approach in order to provide ad hoc self-healing of cellular networks. Thereby, the UAVs are acting as mobile relays and offload traffic to surrounding cells with free resources. We introduce the genetic Interference-aware Positioning of Aerial Relays (IPAR) algorithm which is able to find suitable positions for the UAVs that maximize the downlink throughput of the cellular network. The algorithm is evaluated for hexagonal as well as irregular cellular network layouts and is based on an analytical model for deriving the key performance indicators throughput, system loss and free remaining resources in the cells for the downlink. In order to decrease the introduced interference between the UAVs and surrounding base stations, a random frequency allocation scheme is applied. Based on an exact analytical model for the SINR (Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio) of users served by UAVs, it is shown that by different hopping distributions a reduction of the SINR up to 11.6dB can be achieved compared to the worst case performance of systems without resource planning.

Minimising cell transmit power

With the introduction of femtocells, cellular networks are moving from the conventional centralised architecture to a distributed one, where each network cell should make its own radio resource management decisions, while providing inter-cell interference mitigation. However, realising this distributed cellular network architecture is not a trivial task. In this paper, we first introduce a simple self-organisation rule under which a distributed cellular network is able to converge into an efficient resource allocation pattern, then propose a novel resource allocation model taking realistic resource allocation constraints into account, and finally evaluate the performance of the proposed self-organisation rule and resource allocation model using system-level simulations.