Semi-decentralized scheduling of users in heterogeneous WCDMA telecommunications networks

In current implementations of WCDMA, a homogeneous architecture is used in which each cell operates independently with provision for handover. However, there is a current trend toward heterogeneous architectures in which multiple pico cells are embedded within each larger macro cell. This has the merit of increasing bandwidth utilization efficiency. However, there is coupling between pico and macro levels. This leads to the question of how best to distribute the available interference headroom between pico and macro cells so as to achieve maximum performance subject to a stability constraint. This paper presents a semi-decentralized solution to the problem.