Full duplex communications in 5G small cells

Abstract

Full duplex communication promises system performance improvement over conventional half duplex communication by allowing simultaneous transmission and reception. However, such concurrent communication results in strong self interference and an increase in the overall network interference, and can only be exploited when traffic is available in both directions. The potential throughput gains of full duplex communication over conventional half duplex transmission in a small cell network with asymmetric traffic conditions is investigated in this contribution. The throughput performance gains are analysed using tools from stochastic geometry, and further confirmed through extensive system level simulations. Our findings explicitly quantify how the gains from full duplex communication depend on the traffic profile and the inter-cell interference coupling. The demonstrated throughput gains and delay reduction make full duplex communication an attractive potential technology component for the fifth generation dense small cell cellular system.