Analytical Evaluation of FFR-aided Heterogeneous Cellular Networks with Optimal Double Threshold

Next Generation Beyond 4G/5G systems will rely on the deployment of small cells over conventional macrocells for achieving high spectral efficiency and improved coverage performance, especially for indoor and hotspot environments. In such heterogeneous networks, the expected performance gains can only be derived with the use of efficient interference coordination schemes, such as Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR), which is very attractive for its simplicity and effectiveness. In this work, femtocells are deployed according to a spatial Poisson Point Process (PPP) over hexagonally shaped, 6-sector macro base stations (MeNBs) in an uncoordinated manner, operating in hybrid mode. A newly introduced intermediary region prevents cross-tier, cross-boundary interference and improves user equipment (UE) performance at the boundary of cell center and cell edge. With tools of stochastic geometry, an analytical framework for the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) distribution is developed to evaluate the performance of all UEs in different spatial locations, with consideration to both co-tier and cross-tier interference. Using the SINR distribution framework, average network throughput per tier is derived together with a newly proposed harmonic mean, which ensures fairness in resource allocation amongst all UEs. Finally, the FFR network parameters are optimized for maximizing average network throughput, and the harmonic mean using a fair resource assignment constraint. Numerical results verify the proposed analytical framework, and provide insights into design trade-offs between maximizing throughput and user fairness by appropriately adjusting the spatial partitioning thresholds, the spectrum allocation factor, and the femtocell density.