QoS priority-based dynamic frequency band allocation algorithm for load balancing and interference avoidance in 3GPP LTE HetNet

Abstract

A 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) system uses the concept of two-tier heterogeneous networks (HetNets), where low-power and short-range femtocells are laid under macrocells to fulfill the quality of service (QoS) requirements of users and to boost overall network capacity. However, co-channel interference is one of the major issues that need to be resolved for the successful deployment of HetNets. To overcome this problem, fractional frequency reuse (FFR) schemes have been proposed that can efficiently utilize the available spectrum. Nevertheless, these schemes waste limited frequency resources owing to their static allocation and lack of following QoS requirements, network loading conditions, and service priority of users. In this paper, a QoS-based dynamic FFR (QoS-DFFR) scheme is proposed that efficiently allocates the non-occupied center-zone frequency bands, i.e., bonus bandwidth (BBW), to cell-edge users by considering their QoS requirements. Consequently, the proposed QoS-DFFR scheme can optimize cell-edge user throughput and sector throughput and reduce co-channel interference by dynamically allocating the BBW to the most demanding cell-edge users. The proposed QoS-DFFR scheme improves performance because of its ability to dynamically allocate the limited portion of the frequency bands based on the service priorities of users. The system-level simulation results show that the proposed QoS-DFFR scheme performs remarkably well in a HetNet environment. Compared with the usual FFR schemes, the proposed scheme almost doubles the cell-edge user's throughput and reduces the user's packet loss rate.