Capacity Analysis and Optimization for Energy Efficient Heterogeneous Networks

Enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) techniques are designed to mitigate cross-tier interference in heterogeneous networks. Another advantage of eICIC is energy saving by the suppression of the data transmission over almost blank subframes (ABS). In this paper, we present the area spectral efficiency and worst-region capacity analysis, and then present an energy efficiency optimization problem with respect to the number of ABS's. The analysis comprises open access networks of macro/pico-cells and closed access networks of macro/femto-cells. We propose an optimization algorithm to evaluate the feasible regions for both open and closed access networks. The results include valuable feasible region comparisons and show energy efficiency gains achieved by the optimal number of ABS's for different network parameters.