Coordinated OVSF code allocation for improved sum rate and energy efficiency in 3G small cells

Power control and carrier allocation are the main focus of work on interference management in 3G heterogeneous networks. This work introduces interference management in 3G small base stations by coordinating the allocation of orthogonal variable spreading factor codes (OVSF) in order to improve both the guaranteed data rate and the system sum rate. The coordination is done by a centralised controller using an existing algorithm that was previously used to allocate subcarriers in a 4G network. Results show that even without power control, there is significant improvement in guaranteed data rate and sum rate performance of a 3G small cell network.