Uygungelen, S.; Bauch, G.; Taoka, H.; Bharucha, Z.

: Protection of cell-edge
users in wireless systems by using almost blank subframes. International
Conference on Systems, Communications and Coding (SCC), Munich, Germany,
January 21-24, 2013.

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 6&&-DQXDU\LQ0XQLFK*HUPDQ\
Protection of Cell-Edge Users in Wireless Systems
by Using Almost Blank Subframes
Serkan Uygungelen1 , Gerhard Bauch1,2 , Hidekazu Taoka1 and Zubin Bharucha
1
DOCOMO Euro-Labs, Munich, Germany
2
Technische Universitat Hamburg-Harburg, Germany
{uygungelen, taoka}@docomolab-euro.com, {bauch}@tuhh.de
AbstractIn long term evolution (LTE) networks, resource
assignment for user data can be adapted in the frequency
domain so as to exploit multi-user and frequency diversity
properties of the wireless channel. In order to enable this, every
data transmission is preceded by a control region where the
location of the data reserved for each user is indicated. Since
the control channels typically spans the entire bandwidth, for
densely deployed networks, there is a high probability that base
stations (BSs) destructively interfere with one another causing
cell-edge users to go into outage. LTE also has the property
of almost blank subframe (ABS) which allows for time domain
interference mitigation by muting interfering BSs during certain
predened subframes. Based on this feature, we develop a
method known as dynamic subframe assignment (DSA) to protect
control channels. We believe that this method is suited for future
uncoordinated and densely deployed networks. The proposed
method is designed such that each BS proactively protects the
control channels reserved for its own users. Additionally, the
interference protection does not coincide with an intolerable
reduction in the attainable spatial reuse of radio resources. The
effectiveness of our proposal is corroborated via system-level
simulations which reveal that cell outage ratios are signicantly
decreased without increasing the complexity at user terminals or
BSs.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Wireless data trafc has dramatically increased in recent
times due to the widespread usage of smart phones and data-
hungry applications. Dealing with such a high data demand
has become one of the most urgent issues for network op-
erators. Migration to the next generation long term evolution
(LTE) service has already begun. For instance, in 2010, NTT
DOCOMO launched a commercial LTE service in Japan. Nev-
ertheless, it is clear that further countermeasures are needed to
keep up with the relentless demand for capacity. It is predicted
that in 2016, the mobile data trafc will be 18 times higher
than the trafc generated in 2011 [1]. Many solutions can
be used for increasing the network capacity such as using
smart antennas techniques, applying higher order modulations,
developing smarter scheduling techniques, etc. However, the
most effective solution is to reduce cell sizes by deploying
more base stations (BSs). Dense deployment of macro-BSs,
on the other hand, increases the operators operation and
infrastructure costs. Furthermore, it was shown that 50 % of
all voice calls and over 70 % of all data trafc originates from
indoor areas [2]. Conventional macro-cellular networks may
most likely fail to deliver broadband experience to indoor
users because the transmitted signal faces high attenuation
when passing through walls. One solution to this problem is
deploying small scale BSs such as pico- and femto-BSs with
,6%1
low power within the coverage of a macrocell. Such multi-
layer networks are called heterogeneous networks (Het-Nets).
Pico-BS are deployed by operators for ofoading the trafc
from the overlaid macrocell, especially in areas of heavy
trafc. These pico-BSs are also used for removing coverage
holes typically present in macrocell networks. Femto-BSs, or
home evolved node B (HeNB) according to Third Generation
Partnership Project (3GPP) terminology, are mainly deployed
indoors. These BSs are inexpensive short-range devices and
more importantly they can be deployed by end users de-
mands in an unplanned manner as is presently done for per-
sonal/public Wi-Fi access points. Therefore, unlike macrocell
networks, femtocell networks have a dynamic environment
where the number and location of femto-BSs can change
during the operation of the network as they are turned on
or off.
One major drawback of Het-Nets is the increase in co-
channel interference between small cells, particularly when
they are densely and randomly deployed. Additionally, the
uncoordinated deployment of BSs, indicates the necessity for
dynamic interference mitigation techniques that automatically
adapt to the observed interference conditions. Most of the
existing studies in the literature focus on data channel inter-
ference mitigation between small cells. However, the improve-
ments in data channel performance cannot be realized unless
the performance of the control channels is within tolerable lim-
its. The reason for this is because in every subframe, the data
transmission is preceded by the transmission of control chan-
nels, which, among other things, point the user equipments
(UEs) to their assigned data channels in the frequency domain.
It must be noted that corrupted reception of the control
channels will necessarily result in a loss of the subsequent data
in that subframe. Therefore, there is a necessity for developing
methods to allow robust performance of the control channels
even under heavy interference conditions. Furthermore, it must
be mentioned that unlike the data channels, where techniques
such as resource partitioning can be implemented, this does not
hold for the control channels. The reason for this is because
the control channels span the entire frequency domain, such
that any possibility of implementing resource partitioning-like
techniques is non-existent.
There are some techniques developed to protect both data
and control regions simultaneously for Het-Nets. In 3GPP, the
almost blank subframe (ABS) technique is proposed to miti-
gate the interference from macro-BSs to picocell users or from
femto-BSs to macrocell users [3]. For instance, in the picocell
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case, the macro-BSs remain idle during certain predened 
subframes. Such subframes are called ABSs, since no signal 

except cell-specic reference signals (CRSs) are transmitted. 



This way, pico-BSs schedule their cell-edge users during these



subframes where there is no macro-BS interference on control


 


and data regions. In a similar manner, for femtocell deploy-

ment, macrocell users are scheduled during subframes which


are set as ABS by femto-BSs. Although the proposed ABS

technique solves the control channel interference issue with
low complexity, it does not work effectively in uncoordinated
networks. As the ABS congurations of BSs are considered
static, no adaptation to variable interference conditions is of-
 



fered. This eventually decreases the utilization efciency of the
resources, since during ABSs, BSs do not transmit any data.
Furthermore, as all pico- and femto-BSs use the same time and
frequency resources, the proposed method does not offer any
solution to reduce same-cell interference. However, in dense
deployments, interference between femtocells and picocells
requires more attention. Therefore, in this paper, we propose
a method based on the ABS technique for uncoordinated
networks which aims at decreasing the interference on the
control channel, and hence, improving the cell-edge coverage.
Section II describes the system model used. A detailed
description of dynamic subframe assignment (DSA) is given
in Section III. The simulation setup is explained in Section IV
and results are presented in Section V. Finally, Section VI
draws conclusions.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
In this work, we focus solely on the downlink. The system
model consists of a traditional macrocell network with em-
bedded femtocells. Although the DSA technique is used on
femtocell deployments in this paper, it is seamlessly applicable
also to picocellular networks. The exact distribution of the
BSs in the evaluation is detailed later in Section IV. We make
use of the standard LTE air interface [4], where orthogonal
frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is the driving tech-
nology. The most fundamental element in LTE is known as
the resource element (RE) which corresponds to one OFDM
symbol in the time domain and one subcarrier in the frequency
domain. A resource block (RB) is a 7 (OFDM symbols)
12 (subcarriers) matrix of REs. Two consecutive RBs in the
time domain constitute the most basic unit for scheduling and
has a time duration of one subframe. All BSs in the network
are synchronized with each other where subframe timings are
same at every BSs. The structure of the subframe is shown in
Fig. 1.
In order to facilitate channel estimation, every subframe
consists of CRSs which occur periodically in time and fre-
quency as indicated in Fig. 1. CRSs are transmitted during
each subframe even if no data is transmitted. That is why
subframes during which BSs do not transmit any data are
called almost blank. In order to avoid collisions between CRSs
of neighboring cells, a shift in the frequency domain is usually
employed such that the CRSs of neighboring cells do not
collide. Therefore, we assume that interference originating
from CRSs is negligible. The reader may refer to [4] for further
details.
,6%1



 




Fig. 1. Overview of the basic scheduling unit in LTE. Note that depending
on the BS identity, reference-signals are shifted in frequency domain.
In LTE, UEs can differentiate between the received signals
from various BSs in their vicinity with the help of CRSs.
The received signal strength observed by UE u from BS b is
determined by
Ru,b = T CRS Gu,b (1)
where T CRS is the constant CRS transmit power and Gu,b is
the channel gain comprising the combined effect of path loss
and shadowing between BS b and UE u. The UE then sends
a measurement report to its serving BS, which includes the
identities of the most dominant BSs in its vicinity along with
the associated reference signal received powers (RSRPs) [5].
However a UE cannot measure the received power from all
BSs but only some in its vicinity. Therefore, only a limited
number of RSRP measurements can be sent by a UE to its
serving BS.
Furthermore, an LTE UE is also capable of calculating a
wideband signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) over
the whole frequency bandwidth during a subframe via the
reference signals. The signaling of SINR levels to a serving
BS, in terms of suitable modulation and coding scheme, is
achieved by using the channel quality indicator (CQI) [6].
Finally, in our system model, we assume that each BS sends
the subframe pattern i.e., which subframes contain data and
which are set as ABS, to its neighboring BSs which cause
high interference. Although such an indicator is not explicitly
specied in the standards, it can be applied with minor changes
on the signals already dened in standardization, such as the
relative narrow-band transmit power (RNTP) [6] indicator. The
detailed explanation of the usage of these signals is given in
the sequel.
III. DYNAMIC S UBFRAME A SSIGNMENT
In order to clarify the workings of the DSA scheme, a toy
example is depicted in Fig. 2, where the macro-BS serves
three UEs (painted black) and both femto-BSs serve two UEs
(painted white). The arrows indicate the high interference that
should be mitigated in order to decode the control channels
meaningfully. It is clearly seen that in each cell there is a cell-
edge UE that needs active protection. As mentioned above,
with the DSA, the protection is achieved by preventing inter-
fering neighbors from using the same (vulnerable) subframes.
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In order to achieve this, a subframe pattern indicating the
active and idle subframes is dened for each BS. For instance,
in Fig. 2, BSs follow a subframe pattern with a period of four
subframes. Essentially, this is similar to dividing the overall
bandwidth into four subbands and assigning different subbands
to interfering BSs but we apply the partitioning in time domain
for the sake of protection of the control channels.









 
 can use further subframes as long as they do not cause


contact with the BSs in their vicinity. Therefore, if the macro-
BSs were to implement the same procedure as described in
the previous paragraph, due to the large number of macro
and femto interferers, the number of subframes available to
transmit data would be very limited. Also, the limited number
of subframes available would mean that a large number of
users per cell would not be supported, which is clearly an
undesirable situation. Additionally, macro-BSs serve a higher
 number of users than femto-BSs so the available resource per

macro user is already less than the users served by femto-BSs.
The remaining subframes which are neither set as protected
nor blocked by other BSs, such as sf 3 and sf 4 of femto-
BS1 , can be used by the femto-BSs for their cell-center
users without any restriction but also without enjoying any

protection privileges. This is the main advantage of the DSA
that BSs can protect their cell-edge users with PSs and they
high interference to their neighbors. Such exibility eventually
increases the resource utilization of the network.

The subframe patterns at BSs are updated on an event

     
triggered basis which means that BSs change their subframe
 
   
 
 
   
 
 
   
 
pattern only if there is a change in the interference environ-
             
           
ment. BSs in the network periodically update their subframe

   
   
   
   
   
     patterns at the same time. The period of updating the subframe
           
pattern a time duration equal to that of a so-called time slot. A
  time slot in this sense has the duration of multiple subframe
     
 
 
 
 
   
      patterns. The subframe patterns of BSs remain undisturbed
between the starting instances of two time slots. BSs update
Fig. 2. Overview of an example subframe pattern assignment. The arrows their subframe pattern only at the start of the time slots
indicate intolerable interference.
depending on the feedback from UEs and BSs.
As can be seen in the gure, femto-BS1 transmits data to
A. Required Measurement and Signaling
its cell-edge user during subframe sf 1 . In order to protect
this user, femto-BS2 should not transmit anything during In DSA, each BS must designate one subframe to be used
sf 1 . In other words, sf 1 is blocked at femto-BS2 by femto- as a PS to protect its cell-edge users. For this purpose, a BS
BS1 . Therefore, we call sf 1 the protected subframe (PS) of requires feedback from neighboring BSs (PS indicator) and
femto-BS1 , since interfering neighbors are forced to remain from its UEs (RSRP and CQI measurements). This feedback
idle during this subframe. In order to block a subframe at is used for identifying the interfering neighbors and updating
interfering neighbors, a BS sends a so-called PS indicator the PS assignment.
to the neighboring BSs which have the potential to cause Due to the cluttered and more-or-less random deployment
interference. When a BS receives such a message, it sets the of BSs, it is not possible for a BS to know its interfering
marked subframe as an ABS and does not transmit data during neighbors. For this purpose, we use the measurements from
the given subframe, thereby reducing the interference caused UEs that are updated periodically. Theoretically, by assuming
to its neighboring cells. In a similar manner, femto-BS1 should that all BSs are active during the same subframe, the control
set its sf 2 as an ABS which is the PS of femto-BS2 and so region SINR experienced by UE u served by BS b is calculated
on. as
Ru,b
Turning our attention now to the macro layer, we notice u =   (2)
that there is a macro-UE trapped within the connes of the Ru,m + Ru,f +
mMu f Fu
femto-BS2 . Clearly, without coordination, this macro-UE will
experience very high control channel interference from the where Mu and Fu are the set of interfering macro-BSs and
nearby femtocell. Therefore, in order to avoid this situation, in femto-BSs respectively and accounts for thermal noise. The
this example, the trapped macro-UE, M1 , receives data during SINR of the control region, u , should be higher than the
sf 1 which does not face interference from femto-BS2 . In such minimum SINR, min , required to decode the control channels.
heterogeneous deployments, macro-BSs have more priority If this is not the case, u can be increased by removing
than femto-BSs meaning they can block subframes at femto- the largest interfering femto-BS, i.e., if the most dominant
BSs, however, femto-BSs cannot restrict macro-BSs subframe femto-BS interferer did not transmit anything during the given
usage. One reason for this is that femtocells are deployed over subframe, u would improve. Note here that although the same
the macrocell layer and no disruption to service on the macro can be achieved by imposing this limitation on macro-BSs,
layer should be allowed. However, femto-BSs are only in we do not allow it, as we explained above, the macro layer is

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assumed to have priority over the femto layer. This process of 
  

successively removing the most dominant interferer continues $


!
 
until u min or until all interfering femto-BSs are removed.  


 

The set of removed femto-BSs constitutes the interfering BSs   "

 
  
#
of UE u. These femto-BSs must refrain from sending data   
#

during the subframe that UE u receives data, so that u may

achieve an SINR of at least min to decode the transmitted   

signals reasonably.
In practice, the interference seen by a UE depends on !

the topology of the femtocell network and the geographical   
  
position of the UE in its cell. Therefore, the identication of #
interfering femtocells is a task best undertaken by the UEs
themselves rather than the BSs whose positions are xed. To 

this end, the RSRP reports from UEs are used. However, due 








to implementation restrictions, the serving BS only receives a
limited number of RSRP measurements, in other words, only
a subset of Mu and Fu can be known by it. Additionally,
although the effect is negligible, the noise cannot be exactly 



 
measured. Consequently, what a serving BS b of UE u can
calculate is u,calc which is always higher than u . Therefore,
  
  




it is reasonable to add a bias value to min to deal with such


measurement errors. Depending on RSRP measurements from
UE u, the serving BS b can calculate the interfering femto-BSs
of u according to the restriction
u,calc min + bias (3)
Having knowledge of the (sub-optimal) set of interfering
femto-BSs, BS b can inform the (potential) interfering BSs
of UE u via a PS indicator (which could be implemented
in practice as a bitmap, similar to the RNTP indicator). In
this way, BS b prevents those interfering BSs from using the
subframe it sets as PS and the required SINR can be achieved
at UE u. If BS b serves multiple UEs, then it should perform
the same process for all UEs since each UE has a distinct
set of interfering BSs depending on its location. The set of
interfering neighbors of b is then the union of the sets of
interferers of all UEs served by b.
In order to update the PS, it is important for a BS to make
the least impact on the network. For this purpose, in DSA,
a BS sorts the subframes according to their availability for
data transmission. A subframe is said to be available for a
user, if the user experiences an SINR above the min during
that subframe because only then the user can decode the
data received from the serving BS. Therefore, the availability
of a subframe in a cell is nothing but the number of users
that experiences an SINR higher than min . By setting the
PS as the subframe with highest availability, a serving BS
needs to protect less users by sending a PS indicator which
decreases the BSs effect on the network. In order to calculate
a subframes availability, we use the wideband CQI reports
from the UEs. It is important to mention that the availability
of a subframe becomes 0 independent of the feedback from
UEs if a BS receives a PS indicator marking that subframe.
This way we ensure that the subframe is less likely to be
used by the BS during the next time slot. The availability of
,6%1
   
Fig. 3. Overview of the DSA.
a subframe sf calculated by BS b as

1(usf th ) if sf is not blocked
Asf,b = uUb (4)
0 if sf is blocked
where 1(.) is a conditional binary function whose output is
1 if its argument holds true and 0 otherwise. Here, usf is the
wideband SINR measured during the subframe sf by UE u
and Ub is the set of all UEs served by BS b.
B. Assignment of Subframes
A BS updates its PS if any of the following conditions hold.
If another BS sends a PS indicator pointing to the BSs
current PS. This is only the case for femto-BSs as macro-
BSs cannot be restricted. In such a case, to avoid a
collision, a femto-BS must change its own PS in the next
time slot. In order to optimize the performance, the new
PS should be chosen as the subframe having the highest
availability. This way, more users can be scheduled in the
chosen subframe without restricting the neighboring BSs.
If there is a subframe with higher availability. In this
case, a BS choses the subframe with the highest avail-
ability. This way, a BS has to protect less users.
Since the update of the subframe pattern is determined by a
BS based on the feedback it receives, which inherently induces
latency, it is possible that multiple BSs use the same subframe
giving rise to destructive interference. The occurrence of such
failed subframe assignments decreases as BSs learn the nature
of their environment. Moreover, frequent update of the PS
creates a cascading effect whereby neighboring BSs must
update their subframe selection, which increases the time
required to reach a stable resource assignment. Therefore, we
introduce a p-persistent slot allocation in PS assignment. In the
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TABLE I
p-persistent slot allocation policy [7], when a channel is sensed S IMULATION PARAMETERS
idle by a transmitter, meaning no other transmitters send any
packet, the transmitter sends the packet with a probability of Parameter Value
p. In a similar manner, in DSA, if a BS is required to update
its PS, it does so with a probability of p. System bandwidth 10 MHz
Macro-BS Tx power 46 dBm
As mentioned before, a BS can also use the remaining
Femto-BS Tx power 20 dBm
subframes which are not blocked by other BSs (via PS
Macro-UEs per cell 10 (on average)
indicators) for its cell-center users without any protection.
5x5 grids per cell 1 (on average)
Therefore, the number of subframes to be used in a subframe
Apartment dimensions 10 m 10 m
pattern is non-deterministic and depends on the prevailing Femto-BS activation probability 0.2
interference conditions. Femto-UEs per active femto-BS variable between 1 and 4
Fig. 3 summarizes the actions taken by a BS to update its Macro-BS shadowing std. dev. 8 dB
subframe pattern for the time slot t + 1 based on the feedback Femto-BS Shadowing std. dev. 10 dB
of time slot t from the served UEs and neighboring BSs. Fading model No fast fading
As a nal remark, it is clear that the BS does not change Number of Tx antennas 1
the subframe pattern as long as the interference environment Number of Rx antennas 1
remains stable which favors the stability of the process.

IV. S IMULATION S ETUP
The simulation area consists of seven tessellated hexagonal
sectors with macro-BSs placed at the junction of three sectors
such that each macro-BS serves three sectors separated by
120 from one another. The entire simulation scenario is there-
fore served by seven macro-BSs. Macro-UEs are randomly
deployed over the simulation area and they are associated to
the macro-BS from which they receive the highest power.
BSs (both macro- and femto-BSs) and, in addition, its own
serving BS.
For DSA, bias in (3) is taken as 3 dB and the probability,
p, of updating a PS is set as 0.5. The performance of DSA
is compared to conventional full-reuse, reuse 2/4 and femto
resource partitioning methods. The subframe patterns applied
by macro- and femto-BSs are illustrated in Fig. 4.



The natural clustered distribution of femtocells is simulated       


by employing the 3GPP 55 grid structure [8]. The 55
grid represents a square building consisting of 25 regularly       


arranged square-shaped apartments. Every apartment hosts a
femto-BS with a certain activation probability. Each femto-BS



has a closed-access policy which means that if an apartment
contains an active femto-BS, it serves femto-UEs which are       


randomly distributed within the connes of the apartment


     


such that every femto-BS exclusively serves a xed set of
UEs. Full-buffer transmission is assumed such that every BS
(macro or femto) assigns all available data resources during 


all active subframes to their served UEs. Additionally, each 
     

snapshot of the simulator lasts for 10 time slots. The duration
of each time slot is equal to the duration of one subframe 
     


pattern where a subframe pattern is set as four subframes.
Therefore, a snapshot contains 40 subframes. During the
snapshot, positions and shadowing values of BSs and UEs
are assumed to remain unchanged. The statistics, such as
SINR, are calculated at the end of the 10th time slot by
using the last subframe pattern, i.e. last four subframes. The
simulation parameters are based on LTE specications [8, 9]
and summarized in Table I.
In LTE, the minimum required SINR to decode the control
channels is around 6 dB [10]. Therefore, we set min as
6 dB. The scheduler at the BSs always allocates RBs to the
users during the subframe that the user experiences highest
wideband SINR. Thus, it is assumed that the UEs go into
outage if its wideband SINRs are lower than min during all
subframes in the pattern. Additionally, the number of RSRP
reports that a UE can send is limited to 8, i.e. the UE feeds
back RSRP reports from the seven most dominant neighboring
,6%1
Fig. 4. Subframe pattern used by macro- and femto-BSs for the different
benchmark methods. Colorless subframes represent the ABS.
V. S IMULATION R ESULTS
We focus particularly on the performance of femto-UEs.
Fig. 5 shows the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of
SINRs of femto-UEs. As can be seen, for femto-UEs, full-
reuse and femto resource partitioning methods exhibit the
worst performance since femto-BSs cannot protect their UEs.
Please note that the two show identical performance. This is
because, as seen in Fig. 4, regardless of whether full reuse
or partitioning is used, the interference originating from the
macro layer remains the same. With reuse 2/4, the performance
is slightly improved because interference from macro-BSs
is removed. However, such an improvement comes with the
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1 TABLE III
R ESOURCE U TILIZATION
0.9

0.8 Method Macro-BS [%] Femto-BS [%]

0.7 Full-reuse 100 100
0.6 Femto Res. Part. 100 50
Reuse 2/4 50 50
CDF

0.5
DSA 100 71.7
0.4

0.3

Full Reuse
0.2
FemtoPart.
0.1 Reuse2/4
DSA
0 VI. C ONCLUSION
20 15 10 6 0 5 10 15 20 25
SINR [dB]
Fig. 5. CDF of SINRs of femto-UEs.
reduction of the resources used by macro-BSs by a factor of 2.
Finally, with DSA, the best protection is achieved thanks to the
active protection of cell-edge users by sending PS indicators
using the procedure described in Section III.
TABLE II
O UTAGE R ATIOS OF MACRO AND FEMTO -UE S
macro-UE femto-UE
Method Outage Ratio [%] Outage Ratio [%]
Full-reuse 3.6 21.5
Femto Res. Part. 0 21.5
Reuse 2/4 0 20.4
DSA 0.14 3.1
Table II gives the corresponding outage ratios (fraction of
UEs having SINR below 6 dB) of the four methods. As
expected, full-reuse exhibits the worst performance from all
the methods. Femto resource partitioning, on the other hand,
only protects the macro-UEs and therefore, we get the lowest
macro-UE outage ratio in this case. However, this method
brings no protection for femto-UEs so their outage ratio is as
bad as for the full-reuse case. Reuse 2/4 slightly decreases the
outage ratio of femto-UEs but because of the high interference
between femtocells, one fth of the users are still in outage.
These outage ratios show why interference mitigation is also
needed between femtocells. Simply addressing the interfer-
ence only between macro- and femto-cells, brings limited
improvement. The protection of cell-edge users with DSA
distinctively decreases the outage ratio of both macro and
femto-UEs. Unlike other methods, with DSA, BSs proactively
assign subframes depending on the interference conditions.
Finally, Table III shows the ratio of the subframes used
actively by BSs. Since all macro- and femto-BSs use all sub-
frames actively with full-reuse, the ratio is 100%. With femto
resource partitioning, each femto-BS uses 50% (since we force
each femto-BS to use two subframes at each subframe pattern).
With reuse 2/4, both macro- and femto-BSs use the 50%. On
the other hand, with DSA, femto-BSs can use nearly 70% of
all available resources actively. Therefore, DSA improves the
coverage of macro and femto-BSs without compromising the
resource utilization.
30
In this work, the main contribution is the protection of
downlink control channels especially for uncoordinated and
densely deployed networks. For this purpose, we use a dy-
namic time domain interference mitigation technique based on
ABSs. Simulation results demonstrate that our innovative DSA
technique attains a signicant improvement in the outage ratios
of both macro and femto-UEs, compared to static conventional
methods. Additionally, the proposed method requires low
signaling overhead as existing LTE signaling procedures are
used with small extensions and implementation restrictions
are also taken into account. As BSs autonomously assign
subframes and are able to dynamically adapt to the interfer-
ence conditions faced in random deployments, the proposed
method can be applied to unplanned wireless networks without
any need for a central controller. Finally, the exibility in
the assignment of subframes depending on the interference
environment increases the utilization of the resources leading
to a high system capacity.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Gunther Auer for his
valuable comments and feedback.
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