Statistical analysis and optimization of FFR/SFR-aided OFDMA-based multi-cellular networks

Interference coordination techniques are incorporated in OFDMA-based multi-cellular networks allowing near universal frequency reuse while preserving reasonably high spectral efficiencies over the whole coverage area. Two very representative strategies are fractional frequency reuse (FFR) and soft frequency reuse (SFR), which are deemed to play a key role in current and next generation networks. This paper presents an statistical characterization of FFR/SFR-aided networks that is subsequently used to optimize various operational parameters. The proposed design is capable of trading off throughput performance and fairness by suitably dimensioning the inner and outer cellular areas, the frequency allocation to each of these regions and the corresponding transmit power.