On antenna orientation for inter-cell interference coordination in cellular network MIMO systems

Next-generation (4G) systems are designed to support universal frequency reuse (UFR) to achieve best use of valuable spectra. However, it leads to undesirable interference level near cell borders. To control this, 4G systems adopt techniques, such as network multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC), to improve cell-edge throughput. Network MIMO aims at mitigating inter-cell interference towards cell-edge users (CEUs) through multi-cell cooperation, where each collaborative base station serves both cell-center users (CCUs) and CEUs, including other cells' CEUs, under a power constraint. The present ICIC strategies cannot be directly applied to network MIMO because they were designed in absence of multi-cell coordination. In the presence of network MIMO, this paper investigates antenna orientations in ICIC and the method of power management. Results show that a proper antenna orientation can improve the cell-edge capacity and meantime lower the interference to CCUs. Capacity inconsistency between CCUs and CEUs is detrimental to mobile communications. Simulation results show that the proposed power management for ICIC in network MIMO systems can achieve a uniform data rate regardless users' position.