Application of fractional frequency reuse technique for cancellation of interference in heterogeneous cellular network

Abstract

The continuously growing number of mobile devices in terms of hardware and applications augments the necessity for higher data rates and a larger capacity in wireless communication networks. The Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard was designed to provide these mobile users with a better throughput, coverage and a lower latency. This thesis studies a specific area in Heterogeneous Networks; the subject of femtocells. The aim of femtocells is to provide better indoor coverage so as to allow users to benefit from higher data rates while reducing the load on the macro cell. Femtocells were proposed for Long Term Evolution (LTE) for indoor coverage. It is achieved using access points by home users. However, co-channel interference is a serious issue with femtocells that may dramatically reduce the performance of femto and macrocells. The system capacity and throughput decreases. As femtocells use the same spectrum as the macrocells, and the femtocells are deployed without proper planning, interference from femtocells to macrocells becomes a major issue. In this thesis, the interference from femtocells to macrocells is studied and a solution for the mitigation of this kind of interference is suggested using FFR mechanism. In our proposed scheme for interference avoidance, femtocells use those frequency sub bands which are currently not being used within the macrocell, the process of assigning the frequency bands is based on FFR. The simulation results suggest that the suggested technique enhances total/edge throughputs, and optimizes the SINR and CDF of femtocells users (FUEs) and reduces the outage probability of the network.