Fairness Improvement in OFDMA Femtocell Networks

Abstract

Fourth generation cellular networks use Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) as the multiple access technique. It allows multiple users to transmit simultaneously on different subcarriers per OFDM symbol, thereby reducing the effect of multipath fading. To enhance indoor coverage and reduce traffic within macrocells, femtocells are introduced. Femtocells can be efficiently deployed in the existing macrocell networks and both uses same spectrum. To fully realize the potential of these networks, resources must be properly allocated such that interference between macrocell and femtocell is mitigated. In this paper a joint subchannel and power allocation algorithm is used to improve the performance of OFDMA femtocell networks. This method seems to give better performance than the existing methods in terms of fairness.