On the analysis of channel-aware schedulers in OFDMA-based networks using FFR

Interference coordination techniques are typically incorporated in OFDMA-based multi-cellular networks in order to preserve high spectral efficiencies over the whole coverage area and to improve the system capacity. Fractional frequency reuse (FFR) and its variants are employed to mitigate the inter-cell interference that particularly suffer cell-edge users. This paper presents an analytical framework that is used to optimise the FFR parameters in OFDMA networks when using channel-aware scheduling policies. The downlink performance evaluation results are obtained as a function of, for instance, the resource block scheduling policy or the density of UEs per cell. Furthermore, different optimisation designs of the FFR component are proposed that allow a tradeoff between throughput performance and fairness by suitably dimensioning the FFR inner and outer areas and the corresponding frequency allocation to each of these regions.