Decentralized Learning Based Indoor Interference Mitigation for 5G-and-Beyond Systems

Due to the explosive growth of data traffic, and poor indoor coverage, ultra-dense network (UDN) has been introduced as a fundamental architectural technology for 5G-and-beyond systems. As the telecom operator is shifting to a plug-and-play paradigm in mobile networks, network planning, and optimization become difficult, and costly, especially in residential small-cell base stations (SBSs) deployment. Under this circumstance, severe inter-cell interference (ICI) becomes inevitable. Therefore, interference mitigation is of vital importance for indoor coverage in mobile communication systems. In this paper, we propose a fully distributed self-learning interference mitigation (SLIM) scheme for autonomous networks under a model-free multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework. In SLIM, individual SBSs autonomously perceive surrounding interferences, and determine downlink transmit power without necessity of signaling interactions between SBSs for mitigating interferences. To tackle the dimensional disaster of joint action in the MARL model, we employ the Mean Field Theory to approximate the action value function to greatly decrease the computational complexity. Simulation results based on 3GPP dual-stripe urban model demonstrate that SLIM outperforms several existing known interference coordination schemes in mitigating interference, and reducing power consumption while guaranteeing UEs' quality of service for autonomous UDNs.