Fractional frequency reuse and interference suppression for OFDMA networks

The downlink performance of cellular networks is known to be strongly limited by inter-cell interference. In order to mitigate this interference, a number of frequency reuse schemes have recently been proposed. This paper discusses a novel fractional frequency reuse (FFR) scheme combined with interference suppression for orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) networks, which are currently being considered in LTE-A and WiMAX IEEE 802.16m standardization processes. We confine to the case of cell edge users and show that the novel FFR scheme improves the spectral efficiency by allowing one out-of-cell interference. Then the proposed subcarrier and rate allocation ensures interference exploitation by the mobile station (MS) which results in the reduction of power consumption at the base stations (BSs). Interestingly no inter-cell interference coordination but only a priori frequency planning is required in the proposed scheme.