Co-Channel Interference in Digital Cellular TDMA

Networks
Savo G. Glisic and Pekka Pirinen

Telecommunication Laboratory, University of Oulu

Abstract

This Chapter focuses on co-channel interference in cellular TDMA networks. Both the

generation of co-channel interference and the appropriate interference suppression

methods are considered. Contributions of frequency reuse, spatial filtering and time

domain interference cancellation on the residual interference are described. Effects of

variable propagation parameters (especially lognormal shadowing), cluster sizes and

interference parameters to the outage probability are illustrated. Furthermore, the

spectrum efficiency examples are shown in the form of the Erlang capacity at variable

cluster sizes and quality-of-service criteria.

Key words - frequency reuse, outage probability, lognormal shadowing, spectrum

efficiency, spatial filtering, interference cancellation

1. Introduction

In cellular TDMA networks co-channel interference is generated in surrounding cells

using the same carrier frequency. For this reason a careful planning of sectors and

surrounding layers allowed to reuse the same frequency is required. In addition to

sectorization (3 sectors per cell), narrower antenna lobes can be used to further reduce the

angular sectors of the receiving antennas so that the interference can be spatially filtered.

1
Usually none of these measures are efficient enough so that an additional action should

be taken to deal with the interference by using different cancellation techniques either in

time, frequency or spatial domain. Having this in mind we can represent the residual

interference signal power as

I r (r , θ, f , t ) = (1 − C f )(1 − C p )(1 − Cθ )(1 − Ct ) I (r , θ, f , t )

(1)
= (1 − C r )(1 − Cθ )(1 − Ct ) I (r , θ, f , t )

where Cf , Cp , Cθ and Ct are frequency, propagation (distance + shadowing + fading),

angle (space), and time isolation coefficients, respectively. I (r , θ, f , t ) is the interference

signal power without any suppression techniques. For perfect isolation at least one of

these coefficients is equal to one and the interference has no influence on the received

signal. In practice, it is rather difficult and economically impractical to reach the point

where Ci = 1. Instead, the product (1 - Cr)(1 - Cθ)(1 - Ct) depending on these coefficients

should be kept as low as possible with an affordable effort measured by cost, power

consumption and physical size of the hardware required for the solution.

Coefficient Cf is related to frequency assignment in the cellular network while

coefficient Cp is related to the propagation conditions. Cf = 1 if the interfering signal

frequency is different from the frequency of the useful signal. Cp = 1 if, due to

propagation losses, the interfering signal can not reach the site of the useful reference

signal. In general, the same frequency can be used in two cells only if the propagation

losses between the two cells are high enough so that the interfering signals are attenuated

to the acceptable level. This will be characterized by the frequency reuse coefficient Cr

defined as (1 - Cr) = (1 - Cf)(1 - Cp) and it will be discussed in Section 2. Coefficient Cθ

is related to antenna beamforming and possibilities of reducing the interference level by

2
spatial filtering that is discussed in Section 3. Finally, interference cancellation and

equalization in time domain, which is included in coefficient Ct, will be discussed in

Section 4.

2. Network planning and frequency reuse

Depending on the cell size, three different categories of cellular networks can be

distinguished. Macrocells are the largest with a cell radius of 1 km up to 35 km or more.

Base station antennas are located well above the rooftop level. The commonly used

macrocellular modeling structure assumes a uniform grid of hexagonal cells [1]. Part of

the hexagonal cellular layout is illustrated in Fig. 1. In Fig. 1a) frequencies are reused in

each cluster of seven cells and in Fig. 1b) the cluster size is three.

The hexagonal grid is optimal in the sense that there is no overlap between cells. In

addition, hexagons closely approximate circles. This kind of modeling is highly

theoretical since effective cell coverage areas vary considerably depending on factors

such as terrain, buildings, weather and time. Cellular models can be further classified

according to base station antenna directivity. In the case of omnidirectional antennas,

base stations can be located in the cell centres as illustrated in Fig. 2a). When directional

antennas are used cells can be divided into wide-beam sectors as shown in Fig. 2b).

Directional antenna patterns can also be modeled by corner-illuminated base stations with

three narrow antenna lobes per base station. One advantage of this approach is lower cost.

Fewer base stations are required over a certain geographical area than with direct

sectorization. Corner- illuminated cells or the so-called “three leaf clover” structure is

illustrated in Fig. 2c).

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 Microcells are smaller than macrocells with a typical cell radius from 20 m up to 300

m. In this scenario base station antennas are usually below the mean rooftop level. In

urban areas microcells are often characterized as a Manhattan type of grid, where the base

stations are in the crossings of linear streets as shown in Fig.1c). Picocells or indoor cells

cover usually indoor areas (rooms, halls) with typical cell radius of 5 - 30 m. These

scenarios are not covered in this Chapter.

Frequency reuse is an essential element in cellular networks. It means that the same

frequencies are reused in the system within a certain distance depending on the reuse

factor. This reuse factor can be represented as a cluster size, which includes the group of

cells where all different available channels are used. Regular cluster sizes K [1] can be

calculated according to

K = i 2 + ij + j 2 (2)

where i and j are non-negative integers. Equation (2) leads to balanced cluster sizes K =

1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12, … If D is defined as the distance between the closest co-channel centers

and R is the cell radius (see Fig.1a)) the frequency reuse factor D/R and the cluster size K

are related as [1]

D / R = (3K )
1/ 2
. (3)

In order to increase network capacity the cluster size has to be reduced. The more

aggressive reuse (smaller the cluster size) the higher the level of co-channel interference

that will be generated and vice versa. For these reasons the frequency reuse has been

studied extensively in the literature [1-4]. The problem becomes even more challenging if

macrocells and microcells are overlaid [5].

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A. Co-channel interference distributions

From the previous discussion one can see that no matter what cluster size is chosen a

certain level of co-channel interference (CCI) can not be avoided. For the analysis of co-

channel interference statistics, the CCI distribution function is required. Co-channel

interference can be seen as a superposition of distance-dependent attenuation (path loss),

short-term fluctuations and long-term variations. The long-term or large-scale signal

variation (shadowing, slow fading) can be characterized by the lognormal distribution.

The short-term signal variation (fast fading), on the other hand, may fit to some other

distributions like Rayleigh, Rice or Nakagami. An overview on fading distributions

related to CCI can be found in [6]. In the sequel, the lognormal shadowing is assumed.

The total interference power is often accumulated from several co-channel signals.

Unfortunately, there is no known closed form expression for the distribution of the sum

of lognormally distributed random variables. However, several approximations have been

derived. A common feature for all of these approximations is that they estimate the sum

of lognormal random variables by another lognormally distributed random variable [7].

This can be represented as

n
L= e yi = Li ≅ e z (4)
i =1

where yi 's are Gaussian random variables. In the Fenton-Wilkinson (FW) approximation

[7-10], the mean m z and the standard deviation σ z of z are derived by matching the first

two moments of the both sides of (4). If the first moment of ( L1 + L2 + ... + Ln ) is

denoted by u1 and the second by u2, the following expression is obtained after moment

matching [9]

5
 1
m z = 2 ln u1 − ln u 2 (5)
2

σ z2 = ln u 2 − 2 ln u1 . (6)

The Fenton-Wilkinson approach is applicable when the standard deviations of the

lognormal components are lower than 4 dB for uncorrelated signal components [11]. For

higher deviation values, this approximation tends to underestimate the mean and

overestimate the variance of the sum distribution. When there is correlation between the

components, the FW approximation is quite accurate for higher deviation values (up to 12

dB) too [9].

The Schwartz-Yeh (SY) method [7, 9-11] is also based on the assumption that the

power sum is lognormally distributed. The SY approximation is different in the use of the

exact expressions for the first two moments of the sum of two lognormal random

variables. Nesting and recursion techniques are then used to extend the approach to a

larger number of cumulative random variables. Originally, the SY method was developed

for the sum of independent lognormal random variables. However, it has been extended

to the case of correlated lognormal random variables with some modifications [9].

The Schwartz-Yeh approximation can be best applied when the range of the standard

deviation is 4 ≤ σ ≤ 12 dB. If all components in the summation are identically distributed,

this approximation tends to underestimate the variance in the resulting signal distribution.

The error increases as a function of the number of added components.

In addition to the Fenton-Wilkinson and Schwartz-Yeh approaches there are some

other approximations for the sum of lognormal components. For example Farley’s

approximation is a strict lower bound for the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of a

sum of independent lognormal random variables [7]. For further studies on lognormal

6
sum approximations the reader is referred to the additional reading listed at the end of the

Chapter.

B. Co-channel interference and outage probabilities

By following [12, 10] the co-channel interference probability is defined as

P (I c ) = P(I c n )Pn (n ) (7)

n

where Pn (n ) is the probability of n co-channel interferers being active and P(I c n ) is the

corresponding conditional CCI probability.

The conditional CCI probability can be defined as

P(I c n ) = P
C
<α (8)
I

where C is the instantaneous power of the desired signal (carrier), I is the joint

interference power from n active co-channel users and α is the specified co-channel

interference protection ratio.

Pn (n ) can be represented by the binomial distribution in terms of carried traffic per

channel

N
Pn (n) = a cn (1 − a c ) N −n (9)
n

where N is the number of effective co-channel interferers (N = 6 if only the closest ring

co-channel interferers are taken into account) and ac = m1 m t is carried traffic per

channel [Erlang/channel]. Parameters m1 and mt are discussed in more detail in the next

subsection. It is assumed that the number of traffic channels is equal for all cells.

The outage probability Pout for the desired user can be defined as the probability of

failing to achieve a bit error probability Pe lower than a fixed threshold Pe0 , namely

7
Pout = P (Pe > Pe 0 ) . (10)

If only the effects of co-channel interference are taken into account, the received carrier-

to-interference ratio C/I is the key parameter. If the minimum required carrier-to-

interference ratio is α and it corresponds to the bit error probability Pe = Pe0 , the outage

probability is the same as the conditional CCI probability defined by (8).

Following the procedure in [9], the outage probability of the lognormally distributed

signals can be represented in the form

ln α − ln ξ d + m zn
Pout = P(I c n ) = 1 − Q (11)
(σ 2
d + σ 2zn − 2ryz σ d σ zn )
1/ 2

where ξ d is the area mean desired signal power, m z n is the area mean joint interference

power of n interferers, σ d is the standard deviation of the desired signal, σ z n is the

standard deviation of the joint interference from n interferers and ryz is the correlation

coefficient of the desired signal and joint interference. The initial mean single interferer

power in the worst geometrical case can be approximated by

(
m z1w = ln (3K )
1/ 2
−1 )−β
. (12)

In the average geometrical case, the exact interferer power is of the form

[
m z1a = ln (3K )−β 2 . ] (13)

The desired signal area mean power ξ d can be represented as

ξ d = (r R )−β . (14)

In equations (12) - (14), β denotes the path loss exponent, K is the cluster size and r/R ∈

(0, 1] is the normalized distance between the desired mobile station and the base station.

8
 The combined effect of frequency allocation and propagation conditions, characterized

implicitly by the parameter (1 - Cr), is illustrated in Fig. 3. The figure shows the outage

probability defined by (11) with the maximum number of first tier interferers as a

function of cluster size (worst and average case geometries) with variable path loss

exponents β. The standard deviation of each lognormal component is 6 dB. All signals

are uncorrelated. The Fenton-Wilkinson method has been used for the mean and variance

approximations.

It can be noted that in free-space propagation conditions (β = 2), co-channel

interference can be very severe even for large cluster sizes. On the other hand, in dense

urban areas, where the path loss attenuation slope is steep, small cluster sizes can be

supported. That allows larger system capacity for highly populated cities where it is the

most desirable. The outage probability is very sensitive to the changes in the propagation

environment.

Fig. 4 shows the strong impact of normalized mobile distance (14) on conditioned full

load CCI probability (outage probability) in the presence of lognormal shadowing (σ = 6

dB, FW approximation). It can be seen that without power control, outage events are

more likely near the cell edges. Larger cluster sizes guarantee lower outage probabilities.

The gap between worst and average case interference geometries diminishes as the

cluster size increases.

C. Spectrum efficiency

Spectrum efficiency describes how effectively a system can utilize limited frequency

resources. In general, spectrum efficiency can be seen as a ratio between benefit (number

of traffic channels, data rate) and cost (bandwidth) [13]. Spectrum efficiency is usually

9
measured in units related to system capacity. Problems may arise if system capacities of

different systems have been calculated with different assumptions or if they are

represented in different units. A fair comparison of different systems is often

cumbersome. In reference [13], the effect of some working assumptions on spectrum

efficiency, and ways to allow a fair comparison, are discussed.

The system capacity of a voice-oriented network is related to the grade-of-service by

the Erlang-B formula

mt
m1 mt !
PB = mt
= ℑ(mt , m1 ) (15)
mt
m1 n!
n =0

where PB is blocking probability, m1 is the offered traffic (capacity) [Erlang] and mt is

the total number of traffic channels. The blocking probability PB refers to the probability

that a new call attempt will not find an available channel in a trunk of channels and is

dropped. Thus, there is no queueing in the system. The Erlang formula was originally

developed for wired telephone traffic. It is not strictly applicable to cellular systems,

because it does not take into account the handover traffic. An additional assumption of

this model is that the total offered traffic is constant, which is not valid in the cell where

the traffic is time varying due to moving subscribers. Despite the limitations of the Erlang

formula, it can be used for relative comparison purposes; however, one must be careful in

interpreting the absolute values.

The spectrum efficiency and capacity evaluation are based on the radio capacity mt

introduced by W. C. Y. Lee [14]. The radio capacity of the omnicellular TDMA system is

defined as

10
 N s Bt Mt Mt
mt = 1/ 2
= 1/ 2
= [frequency channels/cell] (16)
2 C 2 C K
Bc
3 I s 3 I s

where Bt is the total allocated spectrum for the system, Bc is the channel bandwidth,

(C I )s is the minimum required carrier-to-interference ratio, Mt is the total number of

frequency channels multiplied by the number of TDMA slots Ns and K is the cluster size.

Radio capacity can be represented in different units as presented in [14]. These new

measures can be derived from the general radio capacity definition and they depend on

issues such as service area, call duration, number of calls and total bandwidth. Other

commonly used units for spectrum efficiency are [Erlang/MHz/km2] and

[Erlang/cell/MHz].

For the system with parameters given in Table 1 maximum capacity obtained from

(15) is presented in Table 2. By using (15) and (16), Fig. 5 illustrates real Erlang

capacities for TDMA omnicellular uplink with several cluster sizes in a Rayleigh fading

environment. Fig. 6 presents uplink Erlang capacities when both the desired signal and

co-channel interferers are lognormally shadowed with standard deviation σ = 6 dB.

Curves in Fig. 6 show that the performance is very close to the Rayleigh only case.

For larger cluster sizes, lognormal shadowing only (σ = 6 dB) will give more optimistic

results than the pure Rayleigh case. Horizontal parts of the curves indicate that the

maximum capacity limit m1, for the particular cluster size, has been reached (hard

capacity limit). Elsewhere, the Erlang capacity is softly limited by the highest tolerated

CCI probability.

11
 A slightly different definition of spectrum efficiency, the area spectral efficiency

(ASE), is considered in [15]. It is better suited for variable rate data transmissions, where

the total throughput is of interest. The measure for average area spectral efficiency is the

sum of the maximum average data rates divided by the bandwidth and the unit area for

the system, i.e., [b/s/Hz/m2]. The analytical framework provides theoretical limits for area

spectral efficiency versus reuse distance for adaptive data rate cellular systems, where the

rate adaptation depends on fading and interference conditions. Users' random locations,

impact of propagation parameters, cell size, carrier frequency and sectorization both in

macrocells and microcells are taken into account. Furthermore, the loading in the cells is

varied. Best and worst case analytical results are verified via average case Monte Carlo

simulations.

Results based on the worst case interference geometry show that the optimal reuse

distance is close to four. The area efficiency decreases as an exponential of a fourth-order

polynomial relative to the cell size. Shadowing and fading reduce the absolute ASE, but

do not affect the relative behavior as the function of reuse distance. Moreover, it is noted

that the fading parameters of the desired user have stronger contribution on the ASE than

the fading parameters of the interferers [15].

3. Spatial filtering

Spatial domain processing included in the term (1 - Cθ) can be used to combat co-channel

interference. At least at the base station there is a possibility to steer radiation/reception to

the desired directions. Firstly, spatially directed transmission can enhance signal coverage

12
and quality. Secondly, interference coming outside from the antenna main lobe is

suppressed significantly in the reception.

A. Sectorization

One conventional way to improve cellular system capacity is cell splitting, i.e., sub-

dividing the coverage area of one base station to be covered by several base stations

(smaller cells) [1]. Another simple and widely applied technique to reduce interference

spatially is to divide cells into sectors, e.g., three 120° sectors. These sectors are covered

by one or several directional antenna elements. Effects of sectorization to spectrum

efficiency are studied in [16]. The conclusion in [16] is that sectorization reduces co-

channel interference and improves signal-to-noise ratio of the desired link at the given

cluster size. However, at the same time the trunking efficiency is decreased. Due to the

improved link quality a tighter frequency reuse satisfies the performance criterion in

comparison to the omnicellular case. Therefore, the net effect of sectorization is positive

at least for large cells and high traffic densities.

B. Adaptive antennas

By using M-element antenna arrays at the base station the spatial filtering effect can be

further improved. The multiple beam adaptive array would not reduce the network

trunking efficiency unlike sectorization and cell splitting [17]. These adaptive or smart

antenna techniques can be divided into switched-beam, phased array and pure adaptive

antenna systems. Advanced adaptive systems are also called spatial division multiple

access (SDMA) systems. Advanced SDMA systems maximize the gain towards the

desired mobile user and minimize the gain towards interfering signals in real time.

According to [18], by applying a four-element adaptive array at the TDMA uplink,

frequencies can be reused in every cell (three-sector system) and sevenfold capacity

13
increase is achieved. Correspondingly, a four-beam antenna leads to reuse of three or four

and doubled capacity at small angular spread.

Some practical examples of the impact of the use of advanced antenna techniques on

the existing cellular standards are described in [19] and [20]. In [19] the reference system

is AMPS and in [20] GSM. The analysis in [19] uses ideal and flat-top beamformers. The

main lobe of the ideal beamformer is flat and there are no sidelobes whereas the flat-top

beamformer has a fixed sidelobe level. The ideal beamformer can be seen as a realization

of the underloaded system, i.e., there are less interferers than there are elements in the

array. The overloaded case is better modeled by the flat-top beamformer because all

interferers cannot be nulled and sidelobe level is increased. Performance results show that

a reuse factor of one is not feasible in AMPS, but reuse factors of four and three can be

achieved with uniform linear arrays (ULA) with five and eight elements, respectively.

Paper [20] concentrates on the design and performance of the frequency hopping GSM

network using conventional beamforming. Most of the results are based on simulated and

measured data of eight-element ULA. The simulated C/I improvement follows closely the

theoretical gain at low azimuth spreads. In urban macrocells the C/I gain is reduced from

the theoretical value 9 dB down to approximately 5.5 - 7.5 dB. The designed direction of

arrival (DoA) algorithm is shown to be very robust to co-channel interference. The

potential capacity enhancement is reported to be threefold in a 1/3 reuse FH-GSM

network for an array size of M = 4 - 6.

14
4. Interference cancellation in time domain

For the purpose of this section, the overall received signal, which is a superposition of N

co-channel components received through M antennas, can be represented in the

simplified case, when all signals are received bit synchronously as

r = (r (1) , r ( 2 ) , r ( 3) ,..., r ( M ) ) −1
N
r (m) = a ( n ) h ( m ,n ) + n ( m ) (17)
n =1

h ( n , m ) = c ( m ,n ) * g

where a(n) is data of user n, g is the pulse shape and c(m,n) is the channel transfer function

between the co-channel signal source n and receiving antenna m. The corresponding

vector representation is

r = Ha + n (18)

where a and n are vectors with components a(n) and n(m), respectively, and H is the matrix

with elements h(n,m). In a real situation the received co-channel signals are not bit

synchronous and (18) should be modified to include two additional components

representing the impact of the previous and subsequent bits accordingly, similar to

asynchronous CDMA detectors [21]. Details may be found in [22]. In accordance with

(14) the system capacity can be increased by using more advanced demodulation

techniques that provide the same quality-of-service (QoS) with lower (C I )s . A number

of algorithms have been presented in the literature.

When used for DS-CDMA systems, the objective of multiuser detection (MUD) is

primarily to jointly detect signals that originate from the same cell (intracell interference)

because the most critical interference comes from there. This is quite the opposite of the

15
situation in a TDMA network where the interest is focused on the interference coming

from the adjacent cells.

An optimum detector has been introduced in [23] as a joint demodulator of co-channel

signals. This detector is based on already known solutions for optimum single user

detection with intersymbol interference and Gaussian noise for M-inputs and M-outputs

(MIMO) systems [24, 25] and joint maximum-likelihood sequence estimation (MLSE)

[26]. A similar approach is used for CDMA systems [27]. Practical results for Japanese

PDC system are shown in [28] and for GSM in [29]. The joint MLSE for a hybrid

CDMA/TDMA based on the GSM system is presented in [30].

MLSE type of detectors are too complex and impractical so that a number of blind

detector algorithms are considered. These algorithms do not require knowledge of the

other signal parameters. See the additional reading section for further information about

blind CCI cancellation.

The latest results include co-channel interference suppression with successive

cancellation [31], which is a technique already well established in CDMA systems.

Performance results show that the cancellation succeeds poorly when the signal levels are

comparable. Timing differences can be used for initial signal separation in order to

improve performance. Soft subtraction provides further improvement.

When M signals r (m ) from (17) are combined by using maximal ratio combining, then

a reliable estimate of the channel coefficients is required. One of the latest references

dealing with this problem is [32].

Recent development in turbo decoding has inspired research in the field of iterative

multiuser detection, macrodiversity combining and decoding for the TDMA cellular

16
uplink [22]. In this approach, as the first step, each base station (BS) in a cluster of co-

channel cells performs soft-output multiuser detection of the desired signal (originating

from its cell) and the interfering signals (originating from other cells in the cluster). So,

the multiuser detector will produce a log-likelihood ratio (LLR) for each mobile in the

cluster. These LLRs for each user are then summed up across the BS cluster, which in

effect produces a diversity combining signal. After that the signal may be deinterleaved

and decoded. If the decoder also produces soft outputs, then this may be reinterleaved

and fed back to the multiuser detector to be used as priori information in the next

iteration. Once again one should be aware that the system places an additional burden on

the backhaul links. Since soft information is now shared among BSs more capacity is

needed on the links between BSs and the base station controller (BSC).

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Additional reading

Co-channel interference distributions

R. Prasad and A. Kegel, Effects of Rician faded and log-normal shadowed signals on

spectrum efficiency in microcellular radio, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 42: 274-281,

1993.

20
A. A. Abu-Dayya and N. C. Beaulieu, Outage probabilities of cellular mobile radio

systems with multiple Nakagami interferers. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 40: 757-768,

1991.

C.-L. Ho, Calculating the mean and variance of power sums with two log-normal

components. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 44: 756-762, 1995.

P. Cardieri and T. S. Rappaport, Statistical analysis of co-channel interference in wireless

communications systems, Wirel. Commun. Mob. Comput., 1: 111-121, 2001.

A. Safak, Statistical analysis of the power sum of multiple correlated log-normal

components, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 42: 58-61, 1993.

D. Schleher, Generalized Gram-Charlier series with application to the sum of lognormal

variates, IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, 23: 275-280, 1977.

J. B. Punt and D. Sparreboom, Summing received signal powers with arbitrary

probability density functions on a logarithmic scale, Wireless Personal Commun., 3: 215-

224, 1996.

R. C. French, The effect of fading and shadowing on channel reuse in mobile radio. IEEE

Trans. Veh. Technol., VT-28: 171-181, 1979.

C.-C. Lee and R. Steele, Signal-to-interference calculations for modern TDMA cellular

communication systems. IEE Proc. Commun., 142: 21-30, 1995.

Outage probability

C. Caini, G. Immovilli, and M. L. Merani, Outage probability in FDMA/TDMA mobile

communication networks, European Trans. Telecommun., 5: 59-68, 1994.

21
C. Caini, G. Immovilli, and M. L. Merani, Outage probability for cellular mobile radio

systems: simplified analytical evaluation and simulation results, Electron. Lett., 28: 669-

671, 1992.

G. Immovilli and M. L. Merani, Simplified evaluation of outage probability for cellular

mobile radio systems, Electron. Lett., 27: 1365-1367, 1991.

K. W. Sowerby and A. G. Williamson, Outage probability calculations for multiple

cochannel interferers in cellular mobile radio systems, Proc. IEE Commun., 135: 208-

215, 1988.

J.-P. M. G. Linnartz, Exact analysis of the outage probability in multiple-user mobile

radio, IEEE Trans. Commun., 40: 20-23, 1992.

K. W. Sowerby and A. G. Williamson, Outage probability calculations for mobile radio

systems with multiple interferers, Electron. Lett., 24: 1073-1075, 1988.

K. W. Sowerby and A. G. Williamson, Outage probabilities in mobile radio systems

suffering cochannel interference, IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., 10: 516-522, 1992.

Y.-S. Yeh and S. C. Schwartz, Outage probability in mobile telephone due to multiple

log-normal interferers, IEEE Trans. Commun., 32: 380-388, 1984.

Spectrum efficiency

M. V. Clark, V. Erceg, and L. J. Greenstein, Reuse efficiency in urban microcellular

networks. IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 46: 279 - 288, 1997.

Y. Nagata and Y. Akaiwa, Analysis for spectrum efficiency in single cell trunked and

cellular mobile radio, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 35: 100-113, 1987.

R. Prasad and J. C. Arnbak, Comments on “Analysis for spectrum efficiency in single

cell trunked and cellular mobile radio”, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 37: 220-222, 1988.

22
Spatial filtering

A. J. Paulraj and C. B. Papadias, Space-time processing for wireless communications,

IEEE Signal Processing Mag., 14: 49-83, 1997.

L. C. Godara, Applications of antenna arrays to mobile communications, part I:

performance improvement, feasibility, and system considerations, Proc. IEEE, 85: 1031-

1060, 1997.

J. Litva and T. K.-Y. Lo, Digital beamforming in wireless communications. Boston:

Artech House, 1996.

J. H. Winters, Optimum combining in digital mobile radio with cochannel interference,

IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., VT-33: 144-155, 1984.

P. Zetterberg, A comparison of two systems for downlink communication with base

station antenna arrays, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 48: 1356-1370, 1999.

P. Zetterberg and B. Ottersten, The spectrum efficiency of a base station antenna array

system for spatially selective transmission, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., 44: 651-660,

1995.

W. S. Au, R. D. Murch, and C. T. Lea, Comparison between the spectral efficiency of

SDMA systems and sectorized systems, Wireless Personal Commun., 16: 15-67, 2001.

L.-C. Wang, K. Chawla, and L. J. Greenstein, Performance studies of narrow-beam

trisector cellular systems, Int. J. Wireless Inform. Networks, 5: 89-102, 1998.

I. Howitt and Y. M. Hawwar, Evaluation of outage probability due to cochannel

interference in fading for a TDMA system with a beamformer, Proc. IEEE Veh. Technol.

Conf., 520-524, 1998.

23
Interference cancellation in time domain

S. J. Grant and J. K. Cavers, Performance enhancement through joint detection of

cochannel signals using diversity arrays. IEEE Trans. Commun., 46: 1038-1049, 1998.

B. C. W. Lo and K. B. Letaief, Adaptive equalization and interference cancellation for

wireless communication systems, IEEE Trans. Commun., 47: 538-545, 1999.

R. Berangi and P. Leung, Indirect cochannel interference cancelling, Wireless Personal

Commun., 19: 37-55, 2001.

K. Fukawa and H. Suzuki, Blind interference canceling equalizer for mobile radio

communications, IEICE Trans. Commun., E77-B: 580-588, 1994.

A. Batra and J. R. Barry, Blind cancellation of co-channel interference, Proc. IEEE

Global Telecom. Conf., 157-162, 1995.

P. A. Ranta, Z.-C. Honkasalo, and J. Tapaninen, TDMA cellular network application of

an interference cancellation technique, Proc. IEEE Veh. Technol. Conf., 296-300, 1995.

P. A. Ranta, A. Hottinen, and Z.-C. Honkasalo, Co-channel interference cancelling

receiver for TDMA mobile systems, Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Commun., 17-21, 1995.

24
 R

a) Uniform hexagonal cellular layout with reuse 7.

1 1 1
3 3
2 2 2
1 1 1 1
3 3 3
2 2 2 2
1 1 1 1
3 3 3 3
2 2 2
1 1 1 1
3 3 3
2 2
1 1 1

b) Macrocell layout with reuse 3. c) Street microcell layout with reuse 2.

Fig. 1. Cellular layouts.

25
 a) omnicell b) sectored cell c) corner-illuminated cells

Fig. 2. Considered cell types.

26
 0
Full load co−channel interference probabilities
10

−1
10
P(I |6)

−2
10
c

dashed = worst case

solid = average case

−3
10 beta = 2
beta = 2.5
beta = 3
beta = 3.5
beta = 4
beta = 4.5
−4
10
5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
cluster size

Fig. 3. Effect of path loss exponent variation to the outage probability.

27
 0
Full load co−channel interference probabilities
10

−1
10

−2
10
P(I |6)

−3
10 dashed = worst case
c

solid = average case

cluster size = 1
−4
10 cluster size = 3
cluster size = 4
cluster size = 7
cluster size = 9
−5
10

−6
10
0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
normalized distance from MS to BS

Fig. 4. Full load outage probabilities at variable cluster sizes.

28
 Uplink Erlang capacities in omnicells
50
cluster size = 21, average case
cluster size = 12, average case
45 cluster size = 9, average case
cluster size = 7, average case
cluster size = 21, worst case
40
cluster size = 12, worst case
cluster size = 9, worst case
35 cluster size = 7, worst case

30
Erlang/cell

25

20

15

10

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
P(Ic)

Fig. 5. Uplink Erlang capacities in omnicells (Rayleigh fading only).

29
 Uplink Erlang capacities in omnicells
50
cluster size = 21, average case
cluster size = 12, average case
45 cluster size = 9, average case
cluster size = 7, average case
cluster size = 21, worst case
40
cluster size = 12, worst case
cluster size = 9, worst case
35 cluster size = 7, worst case

30
Erlang/cell

25

20

15

10

0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1
P(Ic)

Fig. 6. Uplink Erlang capacities in omnicells (lognormal shadowing only, σ = 6 dB).

30
 Table 1. Essential parameters for the capacity evaluation of TDMA system
Bt [MHz] RC [kHz] Bc [kHz] α M = Bt Bc Mt
10 270.8 200 9 dB 50 400

31
Table 2. Maximum radio capacities of the compared cluster sizes ( PB = 0.02)
TDMA(K) mt [traffic m1 [Erlang/cell] ac = m1 mt
channels]
TDMA(7) 57 46.8 0.821
TDMA(9) 44 34.7 0.789
TDMA(12) 33 24.6 0.745
TDMA(21) 19 12.3 0.679

32