Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination Challenges in Heterogeneous Networks

3GPP LTE-Advanced has started a new study item to investigate Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) deployments as a cost effective way to deal with the unrelenting traffic demand. HetNets consist of a mix of macrocells, remote radio heads, and low-power nodes such as picocells, femtocells, and relays. Leveraging network topology, increasing the proximity between the access network and the end-users, has the potential to provide the next significant performance leap in wireless networks, improving spatial spectrum reuse and enhancing indoor coverage. Nevertheless, deployment of a large number of small cells overlaying the macrocells is not without new technical challenges. In this article, we present the concept of heterogeneous networks and also describe the major technical challenges associated with such network architecture. We focus in particular on the standardization activities within the 3GPP related to enhanced inter-cell interference coordination.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 2 table

Physical Layer Network Coding: A Cautionary Story with Interference and Spatial Reservation

Physical layer network coding (PLNC) has the potential to improve throughput of multi-hop networks. However, most of the works are focused on the simple, three-node model with two-way relaying, not taking into account the fact that there can be other neighboring nodes that can cause/receive interference. The way to deal with this problem in distributed wireless networks is usage of MAC-layer mechanisms that make a spatial reservation of the shared wireless medium, similar to the well-known RTS/CTS in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. In this paper, we investigate two-way relaying in presence of interfering nodes and usage of spatial reservation mechanisms. Specifically, we introduce a reserved area in order to protect the nodes involved in two-way relaying from the interference caused by neighboring nodes. We analytically derive the end-to-end rate achieved by PLNC considering the impact of interference and reserved area. A relevant performance measure is data rate per unit area, in order to reflect the fact that any spatial reservation blocks another data exchange in the reserved area. The numerical results carry a cautionary message that the gains brought by PLNC over one-way relaying may be vanishing when the two-way relaying is considered in a broader context of a larger wireless network.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures, Proc. of IEEE CoCoNet Workshop in conjunction with IEEE ICC 201

Analysis of DVB-H network coverage with the application of transmit diversity

This paper investigates the effects of the Cyclic Delay Diversity (CDD) transmit diversity scheme on DVB-H networks. Transmit diversity improves reception and Quality of Service (QoS) in areas of poor coverage such as sparsely populated or obscured locations. The technique not only povides robust reception in mobile environments thus improving QoS, but it also reduces network costs in terms of the transmit power, number of infrastructure elements, antenna height and the frequency reuse factor over indoor and outdoor environments. In this paper, the benefit and effectiveness of CDD transmit diversity is tackled through simulation results for comparison in several scenarios of coverage in DVB-H networks. The channel model used in the simulations is based on COST207 and a basic radio planning technique is used to illustrate the main principles developed in this paper. The work reported in this paper was supported by the European Commission IST project—PLUTO (Physical Layer DVB Transmission Optimization)

Effect of Location Accuracy and Shadowing on the Probability of Non-Interfering Concurrent Transmissions in Cognitive Ad Hoc Networks

Cognitive radio ad hoc systems can coexist with a primary network in a scanning-free region, which can be dimensioned by location awareness. This coexistence of networks improves system throughput and increases the efficiency of radio spectrum utilization. However, the location accuracy of real positioning systems affects the right dimensioning of the concurrent transmission region. Moreover, an ad hoc connection may not be able to coexist with the primary link due to the shadowing effect. In this paper we investigate the impact of location accuracy on the concurrent transmission probability and analyze the reliability of concurrent transmissions when shadowing is taken into account. A new analytical model is proposed, which allows to estimate the resulting secure region when the localization uncertainty range is known. Computer simulations show the dependency between the location accuracy and the performance of the proposed topology, as well as the reliability of the resulting secure region