Dynamic Channel Allocation Using the Interference Range in Multi-Cell Downlink Systems

As wireless networks evolve to orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems, inter-cell interference control becomes a critical issue in radio resource management. The allocation of the same channels in neighbor cells cause inter-cell interference, so the channel allocation needs to be taken carefully to lower the inter-cell interference. In distributed channel allocation, each cell independently tries to allocate channels that suffer low interference level. In this paper, under the assumption of static users, we introduce the concept of interference range and use it in designing our two algorithms; basic and combined. The basic algorithm performs interference range detection and determines whether to use the considered channel, while the combined algorithm checks the channel quality in addition to detecting the interference range. The two algorithms dynamically perform channel allocation with low complexity when a systematic assistance for interference range detection is given. They show enhanced cell throughput by 14.1 % (basic) and 31.6% (combined) compared to the scheme using the frequency reuse factor 1 (FRF 1), and also perform better in terms of outage ratio and fairness.