Cross-tier interference management with a distributed antenna system for multi-tier cellular networks

Abstract

In a multi-tier cellular communication system, the interference from one tier to another, denoted as cross-tier interference, is a limiting factor for the system performance. In spectrum-sharing usage, we consider the uplink crosstier interference management of heterogeneous networks using femtocells overlaid onto the macrocells. We propose a variation of the cellular architecture and introduce a novel femtocell clustering based on interference cancellation to enhance the sum rate capacity. Our proposal is to use a distributed antenna system (DAS) as an interface to mitigate the cross-tier interference between the macrocell and femtocell tiers. By placing a DAS remote antenna unit (RAU) near a set of femtocells that experience interference from a macrocell user, the DAS can retrieve the interference symbols and feed them back to the femtocells, where each cell can perform interference cancellation when necessary. In addition, the DAS can forward the recovered data to the macrocell base station (MBS); thus, the macrocell user can reduce its transmit power to reach a RAU located closer than the MBS. By distributing the sensor nodes within the macrocell coverage, the proposed scheme can mitigate the cross-tier interference at different locations for several femtocell clusters. Our simulation results show substantial improvement in the network sum rate capacity.

Interference management for D2D‐enabled HetNets with imperfect channel estimation

“…Hossain et al [2] summarised the existing interference management strategies in multi-tier cellular networks and demonstrated their limitations. While an extensive promising new technology with the aid of a distributed antenna system has been proposed in [3] to manage the cross-tier interference.…”

Extending Coverage and Capacity from High Altitude Platforms With A Two-tier Cellular Architecture

“…Additionally, the FR scheme also suffers from considerable inter-tier interference (ITI) due to the significant overlap of the main lobes of the beams that form the two tiers. Therefore, the ITI, which significantly degrades the system performance, should be mitigated to enhance performance [42] and fully exploit the benefits of the two-tier architecture. The PR scheme eliminates ITI by ensuring orthogonality between the tiers, however, it still suffers from intratier ICI.…”

Interference Management in LTE-Advanced Cooperative Relay Networks: Decentralized Transceiver Design With Channel Estimation

“…Clustering algorithm and cooperative relay schemes have been used in multiple interference management schemes for a better radio resource allocation, interference management or power control [12]. The authors in [13], [14] investigated a management of cross-tier interference, where a novel femtocell clustering based on interference cancellation (IC) was introduced. A distributed antenna system was also used to mitigate cross-tier interference between macrocell and femocells.…”