Joint Frequency and Time Domain Based eICIC for Better CRE Application in HetNets

Cell Range Expansion (CRE) is a promising solution to offload macrocells´ traffic and improve the radio capacity in Heterogeneous Network (HetNet). On the other hand, enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (eICIC) techniques are introduced in HetNets to mitigate the severe interference caused between the small cells and the macrocell. In this paper, we present a novel application of the CRE coupled with a new time and frequency domain based eICIC. This approach called FT-CRE offers an efficient radio resource allocation scheme which takes into account the number of femtocells inside the macrocell, the femtocells´ loads and the macrocell load. The performance of the proposed FT-CRE scheme is evaluated through simulations. The results show that the achieved throughput of the victim macro-users served by femtocells which apply the CRE is increased by 6 times as compared to a common application of CRE technique based on time domain multiplexing eICIC only. They also show that the outage probability of these victim macro-users is significantly decreased.