Interference management and performance analysis of UMTS/HSPA+ femtocells - [femtocell wireless communications]

Femtocells are low-power cellular base stations that operate in licensed spectrum. They are typically deployed indoors to improve coverage and provide excellent user experience, including high data rates. Cellular operators benefit from reduced infrastructure and operational expenses for capacity upgrades and coverage improvements. Femtocells also bring unique challenges, such as unplanned deployment, user installation, restricted access, and interoperability with existing handsets and network infrastructure. Although femtocells may cause some interference to other users in the network, with the use of proper interference management techniques, this can be well controlled. We present interference management techniques for both downlink and uplink of femtocells operating based on 3GPP Release 7 standards (also known as HSPA+). Femtocell carrier selection and femtocell DL Tx power self-calibration are proposed as key interference management methods for downlink. For uplink interference management, adaptive attenuation at the femtocell and limiting the Tx power of the femtocell users are proposed. Different interference models and their analysis are presented. In addition, coverage performance and capacity results are presented to quantify the benefits of femtocells. We demonstrate that in addition to coverage enhancements, significant capacity improvements are achieved on both downlink and uplink when femtocells are deployed in 3G UMTS/HSPA+ networks.     

OFDMA femtocells: a roadmap on interference avoidance - [topics in radio communications]

OFDMA femtocells have been pointed out by the industry as a good solution not only to overcome the indoor coverage problem but also to deal with the growth of traffic within macrocells. However, the deployment of a new femtocell layer may have an undesired impact on the performance of the macrocell layer. The allocation of spectrum resources and the avoidance of electromagnetic interference are some of the more urgent challenges that operators face before femtocells become widely deployed. In this article a coverage and interference analysis based on a realistic OFDMA macro/femtocell scenario is provided, as well as some guidelines on how the spectrum allocation and interference mitigation problems can be approached in these networks. Special attention is paid to the use of self-configuration and self-optimization techniques for the avoidance of interference.     

Analysis of Neighbourhood Relations for Femtocell Networks

Nowadays mobile operators are trying to find an economic solution to improve coverage, mainly indoor, and to meet exponentially growing data traffic demands. A cost-effective means to manage these challenges represent small cells, such as metrocells or femtocells. However, in highly populated areas, a large number of these cells can be deployed and can operate in a network. Thus, to enable smooth and simple deployment of small cells, self-organizing concept has to be employed, including an automatic cell identifier assignment mechanism.Due to limited number of available cell identifiers, Physical Cell Identities (PCI), a de-sign of the PCI assignment algorithm is a challenging task, especially in dense small cell environment. In our work, we focus on neighbour relations of densely deployed femtocells because number of neighbouring cells and their relations have direct impact on the PCI assignment algorithm design. Since femtocells are not conventionally deployed by operator but by users, the cells tend to form cell clusters. We investigate these clusters of cells and their structures under different scenarios such as number of cells or radius of cell. Based on our study, the PCI assignment algorithms can be adapted and can be optimised to actual state of a network.     

Spectrum mobility management in cognitive two‐tier networks

Recently, new type of small Base Station known as “femtocell” has emerged. Femtocells are deployed by customers with minimal or no radio frequency planning in arbitrary locations. Thus, operators must use new approaches rather than the classic network planning and optimization. Self‐organization techniques will allow femtocells to integrate themselves into the network, learn about their environment, and adjust their parameters (power, frequency) accordingly. In this paper, a new spectrum mobility management algorithm is proposed. It allows intelligent use of the spectrum by secondary user (femtocell guest user) accessing spectrum holes unoccupied by primary users (subscriber user) and handing over to new channels or femtocells when primary user appears. Our solution aims to have more adaptive and aware communication system, which can make better use of available natural resources.     

Outage probability in Poisson‐cluster‐based LTE two‐tier femtocell networks

This paper analyzes two‐tier orthogonal frequency‐division multiplexing (OFDM)‐based cellular structure, when the traditional macrocell structure is extended with femtocells. The benefit of using femtocells is the capacity and coverage extension capability. To fulfill strict quality of service requirements in next‐generation mobile networks such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) or LTE‐Advanced, capacity and coverage enhancing becomes rather important. On the other hand, adding small cells such as femtocells next to macrocell modifies the interference pattern of the current region. Therefore, the number of small cells in a given area should be limited. In this paper, we provide an analytic framework to calculate the outage probability for a macrocell user in OFDM‐based femtocell networks when the deployed femto base stations are composing an independent Poisson cluster process such as Thomas cluster process. Cluster‐based femtocell modeling offers accurate network planning for mobile operators. In this cluster‐based realization, we give an interference characterization and consider the outage probability for a randomly deployed user when communication channel is infected with Rayleigh fading. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Realistic Long Term Evolution Performance for Massive HeNB Residential Deployments

Nowadays, around 80 % of the mobile data traffic is generated indoors, and, therefore, in-building solutions are gaining interest among mobile operators, to improve user’s quality of experience and optimize the use of network resources. In this context, with IEEE 802.11 and 3G/HSPA femtocells competing as in-building solutions long term evolution has appeared to enable operators to meet growing data-rate demands, and it is expected to have a key role in future indoor deployments. In this paper, a complete analysis of the performance of in-building self-deployment LTE solutions is carried out, by means of system-level network simulations in multiple typical indoor scenarios. The variability of the performance due to aspects such as the arbitrary HeNB location, the penetration rate of the service, the neighboring effects of HeNB nodes, the frequency used and the interaction among LTE macrocells and femtocells are thoroughly studied and discussed. Besides that, mechanisms proposed in 3GPP Release 11 to mitigate performance degradation in high density HeNB deployments are presented and analyzed. With regard to these mechanisms, different configuration access modes control schemes to automatically select transmitted power and Intercell Interference Coordination Techniques (ICIC) have been considered, and their effect on the performance of HeNB in-building deployments have been assessed. The results obtained provide network designers and mobile operators with valuable information about the expected number of indoor users which can be served using HeNB networks and its variability under different network conditions. In addition to this, results presented are useful to define policies to select when mechanisms to mitigate performance degradation are required to be activated, depending on the type of deployment scenario, penetration rates, HeNB loads or operator prioritization requirements, and both select the ranges of the configurable parameters of these mechanisms, and HeNB default settings.     

Analytical framework for power saving evaluation in two-tier heterogeneous mobile networks

Reducing the power consumption of base stations in mobile networks is an important issue. We investigate the power saving evaluation in two-tier heterogeneous mobile networks which consist of femtocells overlaid by macrocells. In the heterogeneous mobile networks, base stations without traffic load are allowed to enter the sleep mode to save power. The power saving probability that a base station enters the sleep mode and the average total power consumption of this network are complex joint-effects of various factors. Successful modelling of these complex joint-effects is critical to mobile network operators when they pursue the design of green mobile networks. In this paper we propose an analytical framework to facilitate systematic analysis. Based on the proposed analytical framework, we investigate the power saving probabilities and the average total power consumption in terms of several parameters, including the new traffic arrival rate per user, the maximum transmission power of a femtocell, the number of femtocells within a macrocell, and the number of users in the network. Numerical results show that the proposed analytical framework provides a useful and efficient method to facilitate systematic analysis and design of green mobile networks. Simulation results validate the accuracy of the proposed analytical framework.     

Co-Channel Operation of Macro- and Femtocells in a Hierarchical Cell Structure

In this paper, the feasibility of user-deployed femtocells in the same frequency band as an existing macrocell network is investigated. Key requirements for co-channel operation of femtocells such as auto-configuration and public access are discussed. Methods for femtocell power auto-configuration that ensure a constant cell radius in the downlink, and a low pre-definable interference impact on co-channel macrocells in the uplink are proposed. The theoretical performance of randomly deployed femtocells in such a hierarchical cell structure and the resulting impact on existing co-channel macrocells is analysed for a cellular UMTS network using system level simulations.     

Outage Analysis of LTE-A Femtocell Networks with Nakagami-m Channels

The concept of extending traditional macrocell cellular structure with small cells (like femtocells) in next-generation mobile networks (e. g., Long Term Evolution Advanced) provides a great opportunity to improve coverage and enhance data rate. Femtocells are cost efficient, indoor base stations. These femtocells can operate in closed mode i. e. only restricted users connection are allowed. Therefore, if the number of deployed femtocells is significant, that can dramatically modify the interference pattern of a macrocell. Thus mobile service providers have to pay attention for the number of simultaneously operating femtocells and encroach, if necessary, to provide appropriate service level to every mobile user. In this paper we provide an analytic framework to characterize the upper bound of service outage probability for a potential macrocell user in a two-tier mobile system, when the radio channels are infected by Nakagami- \(m\) fading. In our proposal the femtocells are operating in closed mode and deployed into a designated macrocell, hence every femtocell increases the interference level. The spatial location femtocells is modelled with Poisson cluster process. Compared to traditional grid structure or completely spatial random Poisson point process femtocell deployment, cluster based layout may provides more life realistic deployment scenario. To evaluate the upper bound of service outage we use the tools of stochastic geometry.     

Terminal density dependent resource management in cognitive heterogeneous networks

In cognitive heterogeneous network, when multitudes of femtocells coexist, effective resource management become important to enhance network performance. Based on the base station location and terminal distribution density, we propose spectrum management and power configuration scheme for femtocells deployment network. In the beginning, we consider two femtocells adjacent network and propose the resource management scheme. The scheme allocates time frequency resource by adopting complete reusing and private usage in non-overlapping and overlapping areas respectively. Subsequently the scheme optimizes base station power under the constraints of cross-tier interference and maximal transmission power to maximize network capacity. According to the analysis of the power variation effect to femtocell coverage, a near-optimal solution of the transmission power is derived, and the corresponding power configuration scheme is proposed. After then we extend the spectrum and power management to multiple femtocells coexisting networks, and propose the management scheme applied for multiple femtocells deployment networks. The simulation results indicate that in capacity performance, the proposed power solution is close to the optimal solution, and the proposed resource management outperforms the existing schemes.     

Traffic and Mobility Management in Networks of Femtocells

A deployment of femtocells that is harmonic with its environment is a challenging issue. In this respect, interference management has traditionally been in the spotlight. However, architectural improvements for efficient femtocell deployments, despite being equally relevant, have received less attention. This paper presents a system architecture conceived for efficiently deploying femtocells in the form of Networks of Femtocells (NoFs). In this scenario, a group of femtocells in the same administrative domain cooperate towards a global performance improvement. Key to this improvement is the introduction of a new entity called Local Femto Gateway (LFGW) and the modifications in the femtocells in the local network. This allows offloading a high volume of control and data traffic from the core network of the mobile operator to the functional entities in the NoF. In particular, this paper focuses on building blocks related to traffic and mobility management. A two-level routing approach is discussed. The highest level is carried out by the mobile network layer. It is in charge of (1) determining the communication endpoints in the form of GPRS Tunneling Protocol (GTP) tunnel endpoint IDs, and (2) forwarding packets between tunnels belonging to the same Evolved Packet System (EPS) bearer at the appropriate nodes. Solutions for efficient handoff, local breakout, and local location management are presented for this level of routing. On the other hand, the lowest-level routing is carried out by the transport network layer. This level is in charge of finding the path between the above endpoints by efficiently using the local transport network that interconnects the femtocells in the NoF. A distributed routing solution for a large-scale, all-wireless network of femtocells is also presented. Overall, these architectural improvements render NoFs a promising approach for efficient traffic management in large-scale femtocell deployments, hence making them a scalable solution.     

Interference management in femtocell networks

Recently, smaller cells such as femtocells have been proposed to address the cellular coverage problem and provide a ‘greener’ solution to future high‐speed wireless access. On the other hand, interference is a serious problem that could impact the wide deployment of femtocells. The contributions of this paper are threefold. First, we focus on the trade‐off between energy efficiency and system performance. With realistic long‐term evolution system parameters, we have shown that femtocells can indeed improve energy efficiency of the network. However, this comes with a price—performance degradation due to interference, which is especially severe in densely deployed scenarios. Second, we propose a proactive approach to handover and access management in femtocell systems, focusing especially on the interference issue of closed subscriber group femtocells. Third, we propose an efficient data offloading mechanism for interference mitigation and mobility management, with the aim to avoid potential interference and save radio resources and signalling load in the network. Simulation results have been presented to demonstrate the benefits of the proposed schemes. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Auction–Stackelberg game framework for access permission in femtocell networks with multiple network operators

With the explosive growth of indoor data traffic in forthcoming fifth generation cellular networks, it is imperative for mobile network operators to improve network coverage and capacity. Femtocells are widely recognized as a promising technology to address these demands. As femtocells are sold or loaned by a mobile network operator (MNO) to its residential or enterprise customers, MNOs usually employ refunding scheme to compensate the femtocell holders (FHs) providing indoor access to other subscribers by configuring the femtocell to operate in open or hybrid access mode. Due to the selfishness nature, competition between network operators as well as femtocell holders makes it challenging for operators to select appropriate FHs for trading access resources. This inspires us to develop an effective refunding framework, with aim to improve overall network resource utilization, through promoting FHs to make reasonable access permission for well-matched macro users. In this paper, we develop a two-stage auction–Stackelberg game (ASGF) framework for access permission in femtocell networks, where MNO and mobile virtual network operator lease access resources from multiple FHs. We first design an auction mechanism to determine the winner femtocell that fulfils the access request of macro users. We next formulate the access permission problem between the winner femtocell and operators as a Stackelberg game, and theoretically prove the existence of unique equilibrium. As a higher system payoff can be gained by improving individual players’ payoff in the game, each player can choose the best response to others’ action by implementing access permission, while avoiding solving a complicated optimization problem. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of our proposed ASGF based refunding framework and the overall network efficiency can be improved significantly.     

Interference and Resource management strategy for handover in femtocells

Interference in femtocells due to neighboring femtocells and macrocells is a major issue of two-tier networks. Handover should be made to reduce interference, if and only if, when resources are available. Otherwise, it will further degrade network performance. Resource management should be made in an efficient manner that will not cause interference between macrocells and neighboring femtocells. Since distance between macro base station (MBS) and femto access point (FAP) is short, therefore, it is very hard to sustain low handover probability when macro user moves from MBS to FAP. We proposed handover algorithm for uplink co-channel interference mitigation that will make handover decision on the basis of time-to-stay and signal to interference plus noise ratio thresholds along with efficient resource management mechanism to reduce number of handovers and also resolve interference problem.

     

UMTS Multi-Service Uplink Capacity and Interference Statistics of Femtocells

In this work, the multiservice uplink capacity of single and multiple femtocells is given. The COST231 multiwall and multifloor indoor propagation model has been used to calculate the indoor propagation loss. Results show that the uplink capacity of a deployed femtocell will reduce by 2 % if two extra femtocells are deployed in the same building higher and lower of it. Results also show that the uplink capacity is slightly affected if there are several femtocells deployed in the buildings around the one at which the femtocell under study is already exists. It is demonstrated that uplink capacity is interference limited if the femtocell is deployed to serve the users in three floors. Results show that the uplink capacity will be interference and noise limited if the femtocell is deployed to serve the users in five floors. Finally, it is found that the effect of the interference due to the uniformly distributed users within the macrocell around the femtocell is insignificant.     

Distributed Q-Learning for Interference Mitigation in Self-Organised Femtocell Networks: Synchronous or Asynchronous?

Femtocells promise to improve the quality of indoor wireless communications substantially. However, a serious interference problem arises with universal frequency reuse. In this paper, an asynchronous dynamic power allocation among femtocells based on Q-learning is proposed to mitigate the interference in the network. Simulation results show that in the high femtocells density deployment, asynchronous decision-making process has better performance than the synchronous one in terms of both performance degradation of the macrocell and average capacity of femtocells. In addition, it is shown that our method has superiority to smart power control algorithm proposed by 3GPP when femtocell occupation ratio is over 53 %.     

Performance analysis of an advanced heterogeneous mobile network architecture with multiple small cell layers

The integration of small cell technologies into the current mobile network operators is a necessity for providing capacity and coverage improvement in the future mobile networks (5G). This integration paves the way for heterogeneous networking. In this paper, a novel heterogeneous architecture for the efficient integration of small cell technology into the current mobile networks is developed, namely advanced heterogeneous mobile network (AHMN). AHMN architecture consists of a stack of multiple cell layers wherein the upper layer is the macrocell layer while under this layer, a number of lower small cell layers are formed. Focusing on femtocells and metrocells, as the most typical paradigms of small cells, a femtocell layer which serves the indoor traffic activity of femtocell users is considered, while the metrocell serves the outdoor traffic activities as well as the overflow traffic from femtocells. The overall heterogeneous network (HetNet) is completed with the macrocell overlay layer, which serves only the macrocell users and the overflowed traffic from the underlay metrocell layer. In the proposed AHMN architecture, the metrocell layer is deployed as a complementary layer between the macrocell and femtocell layers and facilitates the handover traffic interaction between the edge layers. Meanwhile, the mobility management in this architecture is critical and hence, the interaction between successive network layers, due to the handover (HO) traffic, is analyzed. Furthermore, for each network layer, a guard channel scheme is proposed in order to minimize the HO dropping rate of the mobile users. We show both analytically and by simulation the capability of AHMN in offloading traffic and reducing the blocking/dropping probability compared with the traditional macrocellular network.     

Optimal deployment of femtocells using cost function

In fact, the demand for mobile data has turned out to be one of the most pressing needs of the human race. In more details, the researcher deals with the voice calling performance and good network signal, which are needed to achieve the above. The femtocells are mostly designed for indoor environments. It enables voice calling and traffic loading, where it improves network coverage. Thus, a femtocell is deployed for signal improvement in the indoor setting. Interference occurs among femtocells. The optimisation of femtocells depends on system factors that require performance and capacity of the network for indoor users. In the above circumstance, the authors considered using the cost function to optimise the mobile coverage, whereby reducing the interference within the users. Adequate MATLAB simulation was utilised for this study. The simulated results were satisfactory since they illustrate the benefits of the methods for the service performance.     

分层异构网络中基于斯坦克尔伯格博弈的资源分配算法

分层异构网络中家庭基站与宏基站之间往往存在干扰,如何分配资源以获得高谱率和高容量、保证用户性能一直是研究的重点。为了解决这个问题,本文提出了一种异构蜂窝网络中基于斯坦克尔伯格博弈的家庭基站与宏基站联合资源分配算法,算法首先基于图论的分簇算法对家庭基站和宏用户进行分簇和信道分配,以减少家庭基站之间的同层干扰和家庭基站层与宏蜂窝网络的跨层干扰;然后建立了联合家庭基站发射功率以及宏用户接入选择的斯坦克尔伯格博弈,推导出达到纳什均衡时的家庭基站发射功率的表达式,并据此为宏用户选择合适的接入策略。仿真结果表明,该算法能够有效地提高宏用户的信干噪比（SINR）,家庭用户的性能也得到改善。