Algorithms for Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (eICIC) in LTE HetNets

The success of LTE heterogeneous networks (HetNets) with macrocells and picocells critically depends on efficient spectrum sharing between high-power macros and low-power picos. Two important challenges in this context are: 1) determining the amount of radio resources that macrocells should offer to picocells, and 2) determining the association rules that decide which user equipments (UEs) should associate with picos. In this paper, we develop a novel algorithm to solve these two coupled problems in a joint manner. Our algorithm has provable guarantee, and furthermore, it accounts for network topology, traffic load, and macro-pico interference map. Our solution is standard compliant and can be implemented using the notion of Almost Blank Subframes (ABS) and Cell Selection Bias (CSB) proposed by LTE standards. We also show extensive evaluations using RF plan from a real network and discuss self-optimized networking (SON)-based enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) implementation.