Identification of interferers in Het-Net in LTE-A systems based on FeICIC with cell range expansion

In LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), heterogeneous networks (HetNet) comprising of pico and femto cells are laid onto the traditional well planned macro cells, are extensively investigated for improving the overall system throughput. Cell range expansions (CRE) are effectively used in HetNets to enhance the system coverage as well as the cell-edge throughput. In a HetNet there is a severe interference specifically to the cell edge users of pico cell from the macro cell which makes the cell identification and cell selection, basic procedures in LTE-A, very complex. To mitigate this degradation, suitable Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC) techniques are required to be deployed. Recently, for LTE and LTE-A eICIC techniques have been further upgraded to Further enhanced ICIC (FeICIC). This paper investigates one of the side conditions of Radio Resource Management (RRM) design, that is, to find the 1st and 2nd interferers with CRE 9 db using FeICIC. The validated results of this simulation are approved in the #RAN4 64 meetings and will be pushed for the 3GPP specifications.