System-level performance of interference suppression receivers in LTE system

In wireless networks with smaller cell sizes and dense network deployments the spectral efficiency is limited by inter-cell interference. To improve signal-to-noise-plus-interference-ratio, interference can be mitigated using advanced receivers like an interference rejection combining (IRC) receiver. The performance of a practical IRC-receiver is dependent on the quality of the channel and interference covariance estimation. Interference covariance can be estimated for example by using reference signals. As the interference structure is dependent on several components, such as scheduler decisions made and precoders used by other cells, receiver evaluations are performed on system level. Because of full network system level simulations are very complex and highly computationally intensive, simplifications in modeling are needed. Typically time-frequency resolution can be reduced and only the fast-fading coefficients of the interfering links are generated. The lack of symbol samples requires a model to estimate the losses of realistic IRC receivers. In this paper, we show system level results for practical IRC algorithms.