Improving the Interplay between Periodic Channel State Information Feedback and Static Intercell Interference Coordination in LTE

摘要

In the context of OFDMA-based cellular networks, Intercell Interference Coordination has been recognized as a key concept to achieve seamless levels of Quality of Service. This is especially true in scenarios where dense reuse of spectrum is pursued. In practice, static intercell interference coordination techniques (soft- and fractionalfrequency reuse) enjoy acceptance among mobile operators due to their natural compatibility with current standards (LTE, LTE-A). In this article, an improved periodic channel state information feedback scheme suitable to work in conjunction with static ICIC techniques is presented. In the proposed solution, mobile terminals report sequentially and periodically the quality of bandwidth portions over which they are allowed to be transmitted according to the selected ICIC strategy policies. By doing this, not only the signaling overhead is limited but also a better view of users’ channel is provided to the scheduler. Thus, the proposed strategy is simple, feasible and easy-to-implement. Simulations results show that gains in terms of system capacity are achieved with respect to existing LTE-based mechanisms without additional complexity.