On the Potential of Full Duplex Communication in 5G Small Cell Networks

Full duplex communication promises a 100% throughput gain by doubling the number of simultaneous transmissions. In a multi-cell scenario, increasing the number of simultaneous transmissions correspondingly increases the number of interference streams observed at a particular receiver. As such, the potential throughput gain may not be 100% as promised. In this study, we evaluate the performance of full duplex communication in a dense small cell scenario as targeted by future 5th Generation (5G) radio access technology under the ideal assumptions of a full buffer, always active traffic model and perfect self interference cancellation. Advanced interference suppression/cancellation receivers are featured as well. Full duplex communication is found to provide about 30-40% mean throughput gain over half duplex transmissions for indoor scenarios, which provides an indication of the maximum throughput gains that can be achieved with full duplex communication in indoor scenarios under such idealized assumptions.