Scheduling and positioning for the expanded region of an indoor cell in heterogeneous networks

This paper proposes scheduling and positioning strategies for users in the expanded region of an indoor cell in heterogeneous networks (HetNet). Small cells play a role in bringing huge amount of data capacity. Most of small cells will be deployed in the indoor position. User cell range expansion (CRE) in indoor small cell networks can reduce uplink interference effectively. However, it will lead to the system capacity decreasing by co-channel interference with a large range expansion bias. The enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (eICIC) techniques introduced for LTE-Advanced yield significant gains by offloading macrocell users to small cells. Interference can be managed by using the almost blank subframe (ABS), in which the interferer tier is not allowed to transmit data. Hence, the usage of ABS can increase both the quality of service of edge users and the system capacity. Hence, the positioning performance of users at the expanded region can increase by giving the priority to the user at the expanded region. System level simulation results show that the proposed scheduling scheme achieves a good balance between capacity and fairness. Almost blank subframe offers a simple and efficient way of decreasing the level of interference and thus give an opportunity to serve victim users.