Exploiting Polarization for System Capacity Maximization in Ultra-Dense Small Cell Networks

Ultra-dense deployment of small cell networks is widely regarded as a key role to meet the increasing demand for huge capacity of wireless communication systems. Meanwhile, network densification will result in severe inter-cell interference and thus impair system performance. Traditional radio resource management schemes pay attention to interference mitigation through resource allocation in time, frequency, space, and power domains, or a mix of them. In this paper, polarization, an important and underutilized property of electromagnetic waves, is exploited as a novel means to enhance system capacity. We propose a multicell joint polarization, power and subcarrier allocation (MC-JPPSA) scheme to maximize system capacity through joint optimization of transmitting polarization states, power, and subcarriers with an iterative approach. Though the iterative solution is suboptimal, simulation results demonstrate that MC-JPPSA scheme can strike a balance between performance and complexity compared with the optimal exhaustive search. Furthermore, the proposed scheme outperforms traditional joint power and subcarrier allocation schemes by means of exploiting polarization in ultra-dense small cell networks.