An Active Power Control Technique for Downlink Interference Management in a Two-Tier Macro–Femto Network

Abstract

The femtocell has evolved as a great solution for improving coverage and traffic offloading from the current LTE cellular networks, and it accomplishes the dreams of the high data rate for indoor mobile users. However, the exponentially expanding LTE femtocells cause interference in the network, as they share the same licensed spectrum with a macrocell. To tackle this issue, numerous interference mitigation techniques have been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we proposed an Active Power Control (APC) technique, which not only reduces Inter-Cell Interference (ICI) in a Macro User Equipment (MUE), generated from the downlink transmission power of an inadequately deployed femtocell, but also reduces unnecessary power consumption to achieve a green femtocell network. The simulation results show that the proposed APC technique effectively reduces ICI and optimizes the throughput performance of the MUE. Compared with the existing power control techniques, the APC technique provides a balanced trade-off in attaining necessary Quality-of-Service (QoS) of the Femto User Equipment (FUE) and reducing ICI to the victim MUE existing in the close proximity of the femtocell.