Distributed Antenna Systems in Fractional-Frequency-Reuse-Aided Cellular Networks

In this work, the authors derive the optimal signal‐to‐interference‐ratio (SIR) thresholds S t which maximise coverage probability for both fractional frequency reuse (FFR) and soft frequency reuse (SFR) networks with base station locations modelled using Poisson point process. It is analytically shown that for both FFR and SFR, the optimal SIR threshold is equal to the target SIR T , i.e, S t = T . The authors also show that at the optimal SIR threshold, FFR achieves a higher coverage than frequency reuse (1/Δ). Furthermore, for the cases when S t > T and S t < T , FFR achieves a higher coverage than reuse (1/Δ) and reuse 1, respectively. On the other hand, SFR coverage can be higher or lower than reuse (1/Δ) coverage, even when S t = T . However, when S t > T , SFR achieves a higher coverage than reuse 1, and when S t < T , the SFR coverage can be lower than reuse 1 coverage. The FFR and SFR coverages are also compared for a given Δ, and it is shown that FFR achieves a higher coverage than SFR at the optimal value of S t .

The project to define Long Term Evolution (LTE) of UMTS cellular technology started in year 2004 is well established to the world. The subsequent evolve of LTE-Advanced however targets for enhancement in average spectrum efficiency and cell-edge user throughput. The limiting factor of the system performance at cell-edge is inter-cell interference (ICI). The challenge that is discussed in this paper focuses on ensuring the overall satisfaction mainly cell-edge system performance through the analysis on Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) and hybrid Macro system which involves small cell technology — Femtocell technology. This paper discussed the three frequency allocation schemes. The schemes include without the application of Femtocell, with randomly application of Femtocell and with preplanned Femtocell scheme. The FFR mechanism divides the cell into two regions (inner and outer). The inner radius and inner region resource is determined base on overall average throughput and overall user satisfaction.

Joint virtual edge-clustering and spectrum allocation scheme for uplink interference mitigation in C-RAN

Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC) using frequency reuse schemes in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) cellular networks is one of the most promising approaches to reduce the effect of interference and to improve the system performance. Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) schemes are efficient interference mitigation techniques that have been used to improve system performance in multirelay multi-cell OFDMA cellular networks, especially for the cell edge users. The purpose of FFR design is to deploy frequency patterns (sets) in such a way that a Mobile Station (MS) user can reduce interference from adjacent cells. The Frequency Reuse Factor (FRF) of 7/3 with frequency reuse pattern (7, 3, 1) is used to improve the system performance of FRF=1 and FRF=3. This paper proposes a new frequency pattern and deploys frequency sets with Amplify and Forward (AF) fixed relays to improve the performance of the system. Simulation results show that the proposed pattern achieves significant Inter-Cell Interference (ICI) reduction when compared to other cooperative and noncooperative schemes.

Based on selective transmission (ST) and maximal ratio combining (MRC) schemes, this paper focuses on the analysis of downlink system capacity in distributed antenna systems (DAS) over composite channels. Firstly, this paper establishes a composite channel model which takes path loss, lognormal shadowing and Rayleigh fading into account. Then, the probability density function (PDF) of the output signal to-noise ratio (SNR) is derived after MRC at the receiver. Moreover, the distribution of the output SNR is approximated by a lognormal distribution. After that, by making use of ST scheme, an approximate expression of the capacity for a mobile station (MS) over a given position is derived. Further, considering the distribution of MSs in the system, a closed-form expression of the system capacity is obtained. Numerical results show that the closed-form expression can provide sufficient precision for evaluating the system capacity performance of DAS.

In this paper we extend the concept of the well-known input–output clustering (IOC) technique in Uykan et al. (IEEE Trans Neural Netw 11(4):851–858, 2000) to antenna location optimization problem in wireless networks and propose an input–output space clustering criterion (IOCC) to optimize the locations of the remote antenna units (RAUs) of generalized distributed antenna systems (DASs) under sum power constraint. In IOCC, the input space refers to RAU location space and output space refers to location specific ergodic capacity space for noise-limited environments. Given a location-specific arbitrary desired ergodic capacity function over a geographical area, we define the error as the difference between actual and desired ergodic capacity. Following the major steps of the well-known IOC technique in Uykan et al. (IEEE Trans Neural Netw 11(4):851–858, 2000) and Uykan (IEEE Trans Neural Netw 14(3):708–715, 2003) we show that for the DAS wireless networks: (1) the IOCC provides an upper bound to the cell averaged ergodic capacity error; and (2) the derived upper bound is equal to a weighted quantization error function in location-capacity space (input–output space) and (3) the upper bound can be made arbitrarily small by a clustering process increasing the number of RAUs for a feasible DAS. IOCC converts the RAU location problem into a codebook design problem in vector quantization in input–output space, and thus includes the Squared Distance Criterion (SDC) for DAS in Wang et al. (IEEE Commun Lett 13:315–317, 2009) (and other related papers) as a special case, which takes only the input space into account. Computer simulations confirm the theoretical findings and show that the IOCC outperforms the SDC for DAS in terms of the defined cell averaged “effective” ergodic capacity.

Spectrum sharing has been considered as a most promising solution to improve the spectrum efficiency of next-generation wireless networks. In particular, non orthogonal spectrum sharing allows the multiple operators to simultaneously use the available frequency bands, which leads to degradation of signal to interference ratio (SIR) at the intended receivers. To improve the SIR, we have proposed fractional frequency reuse (FFR) based structure for non-orthogonal spectrum shared (NOSS) systems. The coverage probability and average rate expressions are obtained for the proposed FFR based NOSS systems, and it is revealed that the proposed spectrum shared system ensures higher sum rate in comparison to no spectrum shared system, without any significant degradation in coverage probability. In particular, our analysis shows that FFR based NOSS system achieves 33% higher rate as compared to the case of no spectrum shared systems, however only 7% decrement is seen in coverage probability.

For the upcoming 4G systems, network multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC) are two of key techniques adopted in 4G systems to mitigate the serious inter-cell interference (ICI) and improve coverage and cell-edge throughput. Network MIMO is referred to as coordinated multi-point (CoMP) in LTE-A. In this paper, we propose a simulation platform to analyze the handover issue for downlink CoMP transmissions in LTE-A cellular systems. Among the variety of ICIC strategies, we apply the widely adopted soft frequency reuse (SFR) and the fractional frequency reuse (FFR) schemes. Both schemes are based on the idea of applying a frequency reuse factor of one in cell-center areas, and a higher reuse factor in cell-edge areas. Therefore, the ICI is reduced at the expense of the available frequency resources for each cell.

The severe interference in full-duplex (FD) cellular network largely degrade the system performance, especially for cell edge users. In this paper, hybrid full/half duplex cellular network which is composed of a mixture of FD and half duplex (HD) base-stations (BSs) is focused. In order to relieve the received inter-cell interference, frequency reuse (FR) is applied. The adopted FR schemes include traditional full FR and two kinds of fractional FR (FFR) named Strict FFR (StFFR) and Soft FFR (SoFFR). Stochastic geometry is adopted to evaluate the system performance. Tractable results of the ergodic rate and coverage probability for different FR schemes are obtained. Through the numerical results, we can observe that full FR and StFFR schemes can improve the user coverage probability at the expense of system spectrum efficiency (SE). SoFFR can improve both the coverage probability and the system SE. The numerical results also show that if the residual Self-interference is not very strong, operating all the BSs in FD mode can achieve the best performance, otherwise, it is better to operate all the BSs in HD mode.

In this paper, the authors propose three partitioning schemes for adaptive clustering with fractional frequency reuse namely maximal fractional frequency reuse partitioning (MFRP), optimal fractional reuse partitioning (OFRP), and GoS-oriented frequency reuse partitioning. The authors propose that an overlaid cellular clustering scheme, which uses adaptive fractional frequency reuse factors, would provide a better capacity by exploiting the high level of signal to interference ratio (SIR). The proposed methods are studied via simulations and the results show that the adaptive clustering with different partitioning methods provide better capacity and grade of service (GoS) comparing to the conventional cellular architectures.

This paper investigates the distributed power allocation problem for coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmissions in distributed antenna systems (DAS). Traditional duality-based optimization techniques cannot be directly applied to this problem, because the non-strict concavity of the CoMP transmission's achievable rate with respect to the transmission power induces that the local power allocation subproblems have non-unique optimum solutions. We propose a distributed power allocation algorithm to resolve this non-strict concavity difficulty. This algorithm only requires local information exchange among neighboring base stations serving the same user, and is thus flexible with respect to network size and topology. The step-size parameters of this algorithm are determined by only local user access relationship (i.e., the number of users served by each antenna), but do not rely on channel coefficients. Therefore, the convergence speed of this algorithm is quite robust to channel fading. We rigorously prove that this algorithm converges to an optimum solution of the power allocation problem. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed power allocation algorithm.

In order to demonstrate the channel capacity improvement by multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission techniques in distributed antenna systems (DAS), the channel capacities of both centralized antenna systems (CAS) and DAS are compared assuming spatially correlated shadowing. Many studies deal with these channel capacities assuming spatially independent shadowing. In this paper, we compare the characteristics of MIMO channel capacity in CAS and DAS under the effect of distance-dependent path loss, spatially correlated shadowing loss, Rayleigh fading, and inter-cell interference. Computer simulation results indicate that DAS-MIMO transmission can significantly reduce the spatially correlated shadowing loss, thus improving the outage capacity compared to CAS-MIMO transmission. Furthermore, the simulation results also show a relationship between inter-antenna distance and channel capacity.

Effective inter-cell interference mitigation has been extensively studied because of its outstanding cell-edge signal quality improvement capability. Conventional static inter-cell interference coordination strategies, including fractional frequency reuse and soft frequency reuse, have received much attention owing to their effectiveness in mitigating interference and low complexity in implementation. However, they are less effective when dealing with dense uneven traffic distributions and dynamic traffic demands and thus incur low spectrum utilization in some cells and spectrum shortage in others. This paper proposes a universal frequency reuse scheme in a two-layer Long Term Evolution-Advanced heterogeneous network to ensure good throughput for all user equipment (UE), especially UEs at cell edge. The proposed scheme allows each cell to use all the spectrum resources, limited by an orderly regulation of all sub-bands. This scheme minimizes the potential occurrence probability of inter-cell co-sub-band interference through an intra-cell sub-band resource management. Furthermore, a graph-theoretic based sub-band allocation algorithm is developed to optimize UE throughput performance, especially for the cell-edge low signal to interference noise ratio UEs. A comprehensive performance comparison among different frequency reuse schemes is conducted by considering performance metrics, including cell-edge throughput, average throughput, and signal to interference noise ratio cumulative distribution function. Simulation result shows that the universal frequency reuse scheme outperforms other two schemes significantly. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) is considered to provide enhancement in total throughput and an important reduction of the outage probability in two-tier macrocell-femtocell networks. However the allocation in FFR can create high cross-tier interferences to users located in the boundaries of the various zones. We propose a FFR scheme to alleviate the downlink cross-tier interference for users in these particular zones, joint with a QoS- aware analytical model to derive the blocking probabilities for different cell zones. The optimal parameters for cell channel partitioning in the proposed FFR-scheme are integrated to enhance the proposed system. Numerical results demonstrate the performance enhancement of the proposed joint FFR allocation and admission control scheme. Compared to current FFR and admission control strategies, our scheme permits to increase overall traffic by up to 40 % at cell center and 30 % at cell edge, for any given blocking probability.

It is known that distributed antenna systems (DAS) using radio-over-fiber (RoF) links are able to increase coverage and to improve energy efficiency compared to traditional wireless access networks. In this paper, we focus on the energy efficiency of 802.11n RoF DAS architectures and we provide a methodology based on ns-3 to evaluate and optimize energy consumption in those environments. Our results confirm that there exists an optimal number of distributed antennas for a given scenario. Furthermore, we show that aggregation mechanisms included in IEEE 802.11n enable to further improve the energy efficiency in RoF DAS. Finally, we demonstrate that media access control protocol data unit aggregation techniques outperform media access control service data unit aggregation schemes in providing higher end-to-end throughput and a better energy efficiency in IEEE 802.11n RoF DAS.