Dynamic Interference Steering in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

With the development of diverse wireless communication technologies, interference has become a key impediment in network performance, thus making effective interference management (IM) essential to accommodate a rapidly increasing number of subscribers with diverse services. Although there have been numerous IM schemes proposed thus far, none of them are free of some form of cost. It is, therefore, important to balance the benefit brought by and cost of each adopted IM scheme by adapting its operating parameters to various network deployments and dynamic channel conditions. We propose a novel IM scheme, called dynamic interference steering (DIS), by recognizing the fact that interference can be not only suppressed or mitigated but also steered in a particular direction. Specifically, DIS exploits both channel state information and the data contained in the interfering signal to generate a signal that modifies the spatial feature of the original interference to partially or fully cancel the interference appearing at the victim receiver. By intelligently determining the strength of the steering signal, DIS can steer the interference in an optimal direction to balance the transmitter's power used for interference steering and the desired signal's transmission. DIS is shown via simulation to be able to make better use of the transmit power, hence enhancing users' spectral efficiency effectively.