Handling CCI and ICI in OFDMA femtocell networks through frequency scheduling

Femtocells have a strong potential for increasing the efficiency and coverage of next-generation broadband wireless networks. In this paper, a co-channel framework for the coexistence of orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) based macrocell and femtocell wireless networks is proposed. It is based on utilizing the resource blocks of macrocell-associated mobile stations (mMSs) that are far away to a femtocell base station (fBS), therefore avoiding strong interference that may occur between a femtocell and close-by mMSs. An avoidance method that jointly utilizes the spectrum sensing results as well as scheduling information obtained from the macrocell base station (mBS) is introduced. Moreover, the impact of inter-carrier interference (ICI) from the mMSs in the uplink is discussed and evaluated through simulations.