Inter-cell interference coordination using coordinated inter-cell interference power control in uplink

We propose an inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC) method that employs inter-cell coordinated transmission power control (TPC) based on inter-cell interference power in addition to conventional received signal power-based TPC in the cellular uplink. We assume orthogonal multiple-access such as in the 3GPP LTE. In the proposed method, an ICIC effect similar to that for conventional fractional frequency reuse (FFR) is obtained. This is achieved by coordinating the allowable inter-cell interference power level at the respective frequency blocks within the system bandwidth among neighboring cells in a semi-static manner. Different from conventional FFR, since all users within a cell can access all the frequency blocks, the reduction in the multiuser diversity gain is abated. Computer simulation results show that the proposed method enhances both the cell-edge and average user throughput simultaneously compared to conventional universal frequency reuse (UFR) and FFR.