Clustering-based time-domain inter-cell interference coordination in dense small cell networks

As traditional wireless cellular networks are facing a rapid growth of traffic demand, future networks may consist of a large number of small cells which are densely deployed. However, networks in dense environment is exposed to strong inter-cell interference problem which is critical to networks capacity. To solve the problem, we use the Graph Coloring Algorithm (GCA) to divide the small cells into different clusters to mitigate the serious inter-cell interference between the dense small cells, and accordingly reducing the transmission power of small cell BSs in some subframes based on the proposed utility function. The existence of the optimal solutions to the problem is discussed, then the Differential Evolution (DE) is applied to search the optimal transmission power which maximizes the proposed utility function. Intensive simulations show that the proposed scheme can significantly mitigate the co-tier interference and maximize networks capacity.