The Time-Domain Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination in Heterogeneous Networks

In order to enhance the cell coverage performance and achieve the higher spectral efficiency, 3GPP studied the new network deployment of Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) for LTE-Advanced and has completed relevant work items [1]. In cochannel HetNet, Macros and low power nodes (LPNs), such as Femto, Pico and Relay, are deployed with overlapped coverage. For Macro/Pico scenarios, the Cell Range Expansion (CRE) scheme is utilized to offload heavy traffic from Macro cells [2]. However, due to imbalanced transmitting power, the interference between two layers of nodes is challenging, mainly Pico UEs suffer a severe DL interference. The time-domain enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) method is one of the key solutions standardized in 3GPP [3-6], while proper design of almost blank subframes (ABS) pattern is left to implementation. In this paper, a novel configuration scheme is proposed for ABS pattern, particularly applied in TD-LTE-Advanced [7]. Evaluation results show that with the proper configuration of ABS pattern, a minimum 16% gain on throughput can be achieved for Pico. Although resource reduction can affect the throughput of Macros, the average system performance remains increasing under the scenarios of one Pico per Macro cell.