A Simulation Framework for the Evaluation of Frequency Reuse in LTE-A Systems

Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) technology is considered as the most possible candidate for next generation mobile communications. LTE-A networks offer high capacity and are specified and designed to accommodate small, high performance, power-efficient end-user devices. Similarly to its predecessor LTE, LTE-A incorporates inter-cell interference mitigation methods in order to mitigate interference and to enhance efficiency in bandwidth usage. These methods include power and frequency allocation schemes that allow neighbouring cells and femtocells in heterogeneous networks to co-ordinately share and reuse available spectral resources, in order to avoid performance degradation for interference suffering cell-edge users. In this paper, the authors study the LTE-A multi-cell systems' performance using a simulation framework, which integrates several frequency reuse techniques and provides a user-friendly graphical presentation of the evaluation results. The optimal Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) configuration for the user-defined network instance is also determined, based on overall performance and fairness index metrics. Finally, the authors examine FFR techniques in two-tier femtocell/macrocell environments and evaluate them based on the optimization of different metrics, depending on the network operator's needs.