Enhanced Inter-cell Interference Coordination in Heterogeneous Networks for LTE-Advanced

Femtocells, a kind of low power nodes in a heterogeneous network for LTE-Advanced, have become an attractive device to offer better system performance and user experience. However, due to co-channel deployments with the macro cell, the home eNB which serves closed subscriber groups will impose serious interference on macro users especially on their PDCCHs which spans over the whole system bandwidth. In this paper, we propose an enhanced ICIC mechanism to suppress such interference by blanking two OFDM symbols. Furthermore, for Release 10 victim users, a novel repetitively designing PDCCH scheme is proposed such that the interference can be avoided effectively. Analysis shows that our approach is backward compatible and can support LTE TDD and FDD systems simultaneously. And simulations demonstrate that satisfying performance can be obtained by using our methods.