LTE performance at the cell edge and ICIC

Frequency reuse factor in LTE network is 1 meaning that the total available bandwidth is used in every cell. Intra-cell interference in the downlink direction is mitigated via orthogonality. Interference is therefore dominated by inter-cell interference, especially at the cell edge. In order to measure the impact of the inter-cell interference, and thus weight the importance and necessity for inter-cell interference coordination implementation, performance measurement has been performed in a commercial LTE network. Overview of the main interference mitigation techniques has been presented and their main characteristics have been analyzed.