The need for QoE-driven interference management in femtocell-overlaid cellular networks

Abstract

Under the current requirements for mobile, ubiquitous and highly reliable communications, internet and mobile communication technologies have converged to an all-Internet Protocol (IP) packet network. This technological evolution is followed by a major change in the cellular networks’ architecture, where the traditional wide-range cells (macrocells) coexist with indoor smallsized cells (femtocells). A key challenge for the evolved heterogeneous cellular networks is the mitigation of the generated interferences. In the literature, this problem has been thoroughly studied from the Quality of Service (QoS) point of view, while a study from the user’s satisfaction perspective, described under the term “Quality of Experience (QoE)”, has not received enough attention yet. In this paper, we study the QoE performance of VoIP calls in a femto-overlaid Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) network and we examine how QoE can drive a power controlled interference management scheme.