Self-Optimization of Spectrum Assignment and Transmission Power in OFDMA Femtocells

This paper presents a framework based on self-organization to jointly self-optimize the spectrum assignment and the transmission power in the context of downlink OFDMA femtocell deployments. It is a distributed framework where each femtocell acts as an autonomous entity. Femtocells perform spectrum and transmission power assignment based on users’ reported measurements, which are employed to sense intercell interference, including that from other femtocells or from macrocells in two-layer deployments. Results have been obtained for a realistic indoor femtocell deployment with and without macrocell interference. The paper shows that, thanks to self-organization, sensible performance improvements can be achieved in terms of spectral efficiency and power consumption reductions.