Statistically Controlled Opportunistic Resource Block Sharing for Femto Cell Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an efficient interference management technique which controls the number of resource blocks (or subcarriers) shared with other cells based on statistical interference levels among cells. The proposed technique tries to maximize average throughput of a femto cell user under a constraint on non-real time control of a femto cell network while guaranteeing a target throughput value of a macro cell user. In our proposed scheme, femto cells opportunistically use resource blocks allocated to other cells if the required average user throughput is not attained with the primarily allocated resource blocks. The proposed method is similar to the underlay approach in cognitive radio systems, but resource block sharing among cells is statistically controlled. For the statistical control, a femto cell sever constructs a table storing average mutual interference among cells and periodically updates the table. This statistical approach fully satisfies the constraint of non-real time control for femto cell networks. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves higher average femto user throughput than conventional frequency reuse schemes for time varying number of users.