Relay-Based Clustering Method for Interference Management in Heterogeneous Wireless Cellular Network

Abstract

Femtocell is one of solutions to improve quality of services and network capacity for users in indoor areas. Radio resources used by femtocells are shared from macrocell network, thus it saves the use of frequency spectrum. However, one of problems in deploying femtocells within coverage area of macrocells is interference due to radio resources sharing between femtocells and macrocells. It creates interferences called as cross-tier (macrocell-femtocell/femtocell-macrocell) and co-tier (macrocell-macrocell/femtocell-femtocell) interferences. This paper proposes a relay-based clustering method to mitigate interference in femtocells located in the whole edge area of macrocell and the cell edge area of sectorized macrocells. Relay nodes are deployed statically (fixed location) in the neighboring macrocell area. Relay node will recruit their members based on the shortest distance. Certain relay node’s members do not need to transmit large amounts of power to enhanced Node B (eNB), such that interference from Macrocell User Equipment (MUE) to Home enhanced Node B (HeNB) can be minimized. Simulation experiments has been carried out and optimistic results for the sectorized macrocells scenario show that Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise-Ratio (SINR) of femtocells for the conventional system that does not reach the targeted SINR of 20 dB is 87%. Meanwhile, after applying the relay-based clustering method, SINR value of femtocells below or equal to 20 dB reaches 72%. Optimistic results for throughput and Bit Error Rate (BER) show improvement of 15% and 14%, respectively. It has been shown that the relay-based clustering method can provide better performance compared to the conventional system even for femtocells densely deployed.