Resource allocation in integrated femto–macrocell networks based on location awareness

Abstract

This study presents an efficient fractional frequency reuse scheme for macrocell network which uses six directional antennas to cover the outer region and analyses the performance. Cross‐tier interference between macrocell and femtocell networks leading to throughput and outage probability degradation is a major issue in two‐tier networks when femtocells are deployed in co‐channel with macrocells. In this study, the received interference from the macrocell network to femtocell network is analysed. Then, based on the degree of received interference, an algorithm for orthogonal resource allocation to femtocells with low cross‐tier interference is presented. According to the introduced scheme, macrocell uses all resource blocks along with a portion of the spectrum allocated to femtocell while both networks operate simultaneously. Closed‐form expressions for downlink throughput and outage probability of femtocells are also attained as well as the throughput of macrocell network. The results demonstrate that the proposed hierarchical cellular network achieves higher throughput and lower outage probability for femtocell when compared to other hierarchical macro–femto cellular networks.