Interference Penalty Algorithm (IPA) for inter-cell interference co-ordination in LTE uplink

In this paper, we develop a novel inter-cell interference co-ordination scheme that takes into account the interference cost on neighboring cells. We formulate a multi-cell utility maximization problem and subsequently decouple it into single-cell optimization problems by including an interference penalty. By solving this decoupled problem, we derive policies for user selection, resource allocation, and power-control. Since the coupling between cells is indirectly taken into account by means of the user´s channel gain to the neighboring cells, our simulation results show that this distributed solution has no degradation in performance while little or no inter-cell co-ordination is required. We present simulation results that show that the Interference Penalty Algorithm (IPA) provides significant improvement in sector and cell-edge throughputs.