Interference margin analysis for OFDMA cellular networks planning

In the planning of cellular networks, link budget calculation is the first step to get the maximum allowable cell radius that guarantees a target signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) with a certain level of outage probability at the cell border. The interference margin as one of key inputs for link budget is used to compensate for co-channel interference. In this paper, a mathematical analysis for interference margin as a function of system load is proposed in orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) cellular networks. The analysis is derived from OFDMA features based on a general expression of exponential effective SINR mapping (EESM). The proposed approach can be easily applied to the evaluation of interference from neighboring cells, and help to improve the accuracy of the link budget calculation in OFDMA systems. All the theoretical analysis given in this paper have been proved by Monte Carlo simulations.