Proceedings of IC-NIDC2010

A NOVEL INTERFERENCE AVOIDANCE SCHEME

FOR FEMTOCELL
Jianfeng Sun1,3, Jinchun Gao1,3, Yuanan Liu1,3, Gang Xie2,3, Xiao Han1,3
1 School of Electronic Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China
2 School of Information and Communication Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Beijing, China
3 Key Laboratory of Universal Wireless Communication, Ministry of Education,
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China
sunjf.radio@gmail.com
cells work at the same frequency band with the
macro-cell system which would induce the interference between the femtocell, macro-cell system
and other neighbor femtocells. Most of the previous researches focus on power control [8][9]. But
the LTE standard proposal [10] shows that the
power control could not solve the interference
problem very well when considering the complicate environment of femtocell.

Abstract
Femtocell is one of the most important parts in the
future cellular system such as LTE. But the interference problem would be very serious because
femtocell works on the same frequency resource as
macro-cell system. Considering the femtocell
would induce interference between neighbor femtocells and macro-cell users which is very complicated, we proposed a novel scheme for femtocell to
avoid any potential interference adaptively. The
simulation shows that the proposed scheme could
decrease the interference and increase the capacity.
Keywords: Femtocell; Interference; Avoid;

1 Introduction
Nowadays, 3G and also B3G system could provide
much higher data rate than before. And according
to recent surveys [1], around 70% of the data services and 50% of the phone calls take place in indoor environments. However, reception within
buildings is often spotty with poor voice quality
and slow data rates [2], especially at high frequency bands which are allocated to 3G and B3G
system.

Figure 1. Femtocell System

Moreover, OFDMA is the most popular technology for the future wireless communication system.
Because OFDMA has finally been adopted as the
basic technology in LTE standard by 3GPP, we
focus on the femtocell working under OFDMA
systems. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme
to avoid the interference and maximize the available frequency resource (FR) for femtocell.

Femtocell [3][4] is designed as a low-power indoor

base-station which could easily solve the indoor
coverage problem. The femtocell would provide
high data rate service and communicate with the
operators core-networks through existed broadband links. There are some generally accepted
benefits of femtocell [5]:1. Reduced distance
would lead to higher signal strength and system
capacity; 2. As femtocells serve only 1 to 4 users,
they can devote a larger portion of their resources
to each user; 3. Lower transmit power. The femtocell system is show as Figure 1.

2 System model
Femtocells are deployed in indoor environments
which are random distributed in the coverage area
of macro-cell. We assume the walls of rooms
would cause 6.9-13 dB attenuation which means
the femtocell would result in interference to the
outdoor devices or any other devices in the next
room with a lower power than its transmit power.
Though the interference is weak than femtocell
transmit power, it still could be harmful.

But the femtocell still has some problems unsolved,

which will seriously affect its performance [6].
Most important one of them is how a femtocell
will solve the interference problem [7]. The femto-

In fact, the femtocells may be deployed very close

to each other. And in this case the interference
from femtocell to femtocell is another importance

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978-1-4244-6853-9/10/$26.00 2010 IEEE
799

problem to be solved except the interference between macro-cell system and femtocell.

should serve any user walk into the coverage area.

Also the femtocell owner could give some constraints or even set some certain IDs to create the
EDL for some other scenarios such as home and
office where the femtocell is set to serve certain
users.

Because the femtocell is deployed after the macrocell system, the femtocell may obtain very few
information about macro-cell to minimize the
change of macro-cell system.
So, in order to avoid the interference femtocell
should work with some adaptive schemes which
are independent on the information exchanges between macro-cell and femtocell.The system model
is show as Figure 2.

Figure 2. System Model

3 Proposed scheme
We consider the femtocell is deployed by its owner,
and the femtocell as well as the operator has no
precise information about the geography location
of each other. So it is hard to solve the interference
problems through signaling exchanges.

Figure 3. The Flowchart of Proposed Scheme

The users have to send access requests before the
femtocell provides service for them, if any access
request is received, femtocell should check the
EDL. If the request ID is in the EDL, femtocell
should feedback the permission of access and then
serves this user immediately. But if not, this ID
would be listed in another list called temporarily
non-response list (TNL). TNL would include the
IDs of users who want to access the femtocell but
not listed in EDL, and femtocell would refresh
TNL periodically.

In our proposed scheme, not only the interference

from femtocell to macro-cell users, but also the
ones from macro-cell and neighbor femtocells are
considered. That means the proposed scheme
would deal with more complicated interference
case than other schemes which only give the solution under one of these interference.
To avoid the interference induced by femtocell
adaptively, the proposal adopts spectrum sensing
technology. The spectrum sensing technology
could give estimation about the FR usage, and
based on the FR usage information femtocell
would adjust its resource allocation.

Femtocell requires lots of FR for the high quality

service it desired. Considering the femtocells utilize the same FR with macro-cell system, the interference situation will be better if femtocells work
on the FR which is not utilized by macro-cell at
that time. There is a special case in which the femtocell could use all of the FR when TNL is empty.
An empty TNL also means there is no nearby user
and the utilization of any FR would not cause interference at all. But to minimize the probability of
interference the FR not used by macro-cell system
has higher priority.

The flowchart of the proposed scheme is show as

Figure 3.First the user should set up the enable
device list (EDL). EDL would include all of the
IDs of devices allowed to access to femtocell. The
EDL could be set as all IDs for some scenarios
such as hotels, malls and so on where the femtocell

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Spectrum sensing could learn the radio environment and give the usage situation of FR. Spectrum
sensing algorithm such as energy detection could
perform very quickly and accurately even at very
low signal to noise ratio (SNR) condition. So in the
proposal the spectrum sensing is adopted to help
femtocell to obtain the information about FR usage.
The femtocell could find the available part out of
all FR based on the spectrum sensing result. The
available FR would be added into the reserved
frequency resource (RFR) which has the highest
priority to allocate.

If the TNL is empty, it can be considered as the

femtocell is isolated and the utilization of any FR
would not cause interference. Therefore, the femtocell would use any other FR when RFR is used
out.

4 Simulation
We simulate the proposed scheme and two common schemes with MATLAB. The first common
scheme is dynamic split scheme (DSS). Femtocells
with DSS could only utilize the FR not allocated in
macro-cell system which means the femtocells and
macro-cell system always work with different FR.
The other common scheme is full reuse scheme
(FRS). Femtocells with FRS would use all FR and
do not consider the macro-system utilization and
interference. The proposed scheme adopts spectrum sensing technology to obtain FR utilization
information, so the neighbor femtocells could be
seen as macro-cell. Consequently, the simulation
employs one femtocell and one macro-cell with
some random distributed macro-cell users.

We define the quantity of FR requirement from

femtocell users as Rreq and the FR in RFR as RRFR .
First femtocell should compare Rreq with RRFR . If

Rreq  RRFR , that means the FR in RFR is sufficient, femtocell would allocate the FR in RFR to
femtocell users. Due to the FR in RFR is absolutely free, both macro-cell system and neighbor
femtocells are not using it. In this case femtocell
could work normally without any collision with the
macro-cell system and neighbor femtocell.

The macro-cell users are distributed randomly outside the room and allocated 70 FR by macro-cell
BS in total. To guarantee the basic level of service
needed by macro-cell users, 40% FR would be
provided at least. In simulations, the capacity can
be calculated by:
C k 'f log 2 (1  SINR )

Secondly, we consider the case that Rreq ! RRFR .

It is clear that the FR in RFR cannot satisfy the
requirements from femtocell users, which means
femtocell should utilize more FR than RFR could
provide for high quality service.

Where, k is the total number of FR which can be

used in DSS, FRS and proposed scheme in the
femtocell capacity simulation; and in the simulations of capacity of macro-cell users k is the FR
number allocated to macro-cell users. ' f is the
FR bandwidth. Because femtocell needs to provide
high data service for its users, it will allocated all
FR whichever is allowed by the scheme. The femtocell is deployed at the center of the room; the
walls of the room would attenuate signal strength.
The room structure is show as Figure 4 and the
simulation parameters are set as Table 1.

But the FR out of RFR is used by macro-cell and

the interference may be induced if femtocells work
on it. Getting more available FR could satisfy the
requirement from femtocell user without inference.
The good quality service needs more FR than basic
service and the macro-cell usually provides good
quality service to its users. Furthermore, the
macro-cell users are insensitive to the service provider but sensitive to the service whether is continuous. Considering the above situation, femtocell
would get more available FR if the service quality
for some macro-cell users lowers from good to
basic.

Table 1. Simulation Parameters

As mentioned above, the users ID would be listed
in TNL if they are out of the EDL but also send the
access request. Obviously, the TNL users are close
to femtocell and might be interfered by femtocell if
both of them use the same FR. At this time, femtocell would get more available FR if the access requests from TNL users are permitted. So femtocell
would response the TNL users access requests and
serve them with basic quality. After that the
macro-cell would release the FR which is used to
serve these TNL users. As a result, there is more
FR available to femtocell and femtocell could get
this information by spectrum sensing.

Femtocell transmit power

Macro-cell BS transmit power
Macro user transmit power
Macro-cell radius
Total FR Number
Macro-cell Used FR Number
FR bandwidth
External wall attenuation
Internal wall attenuation
White noise power density

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50 mW
5W
20 mW
500 m
100
70
150 kHz
13 dB
6.9 dB
-174 dBm/Hz

It is clear that the proposed scheme and FRS have

nearly the same capacity (150-200Mbps) but FRS
would suffer interference from any closed macrocell users which lower the SNIR of some FR. DSS
has the lowest capacity because of the least FR
utilized. The femtocell capacity simulations show
that both of the proposed scheme and FRS would
provide good quality service at indoor environment
and DSS capacity is much lower.
Figure 8, Figure 9 and Figure 10 show that the
macro-cell user capacity when DSS, FRS or the
proposed scheme is adopted. The macro-cell user
capacity demonstrates the interference situation
which induced by femtocell: the higher macro-cell
user capacity means the lower interference.

Figure 4. Room Structure

Figure 5, Figure 6 and Figure 7 show that the capacity provided by femtocell when DSS, FRS or
the proposed scheme is adopted. The capacity provided by femtocell shows the service quality of
femtocell: the higher capacity means the better
service quality.

Figure 8. Capacity of Macro-cell Users with DSS

Figure 5. Capacity of Femtocell with DSS

Figure 9. Capacity of Macro-cell Users with FRS

Figure 6. Capacity of Femtocell with FRS

Figure 10. Capacity of Macro-cell Users with Proposed Scheme

Figure 7. Capacity of Femtocell with Proposed
Scheme

It is easy to see that DSS utilizes different FR from

macro-cell system and the interference to macrocell users is nearly zero; FRS would cause very

802

serious interference and also the macro-cell user

capacity is lowest. Especially, the capacity of
macro-cell users is even lower than 5Mbps when
FRS is adopted which means the macro-cell users
could not work at indoor environment. The proposed scheme utilizes all FR but the service to
macro-cell users is also provided by femtocell.
Inside the room, the proposed scheme may serve
much better than DSS and FRS.

[6] Kim RY. Kwak JS. Etemad K. WiMAX Femtocell: Requirements, Challenges, and Solutions. IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE, VOL 47, NO 9, p 84-91, 2009
[7] Weitzen J. Grosch T. Comparing Coverage
Quality for Femtocell and Macrocell Broadband Data Services. IEEE COMMUNICATIONS MAGAZINE, VOL 48, NO 1, p 4041, 2010
[8] Jo Han-Shin. Mun Cheol. Moon June. Yook
JG. Interference Mitigation Using Uplink
Power Control for Two-Tier Femtocell Networks. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL 8, NO 10,
p 4906-4910, 2009
[9] Chandrasekhar Vikram. Andrews. Jeffrey G.
Muharemovic Tarik. Shen Zukang. Gatherer
Alan. Power Control in Two-Tier Femtocell
Networks. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS, VOL 8,
NO 8, p 4316-4328, 2009
[10] R4-092134, HeNB Simulation Results for
Dense HeNB Deployment Models, Kyocera
Corporation, 2009

5 Conclusions
Femtocell is a very important part of the future
cellular system. Because of the same FR adopted
by the macro-cell system and femtocell the interference problem is serious. The proposed scheme
gives femtocell the ability to change its FR allocation adaptively, avoid any potential interference
and serve the femtocell users as good as possible.
The proposed scheme requires no information
about the macro-cell system and the deployment
would be taken without changing of macro-cell
system. These features are very helpful to the large
scale deployment of femtocells.

Acknowledgements
This work is supported in part by Sino-Swedish
IMT-Advanced
Cooperation
Project
(No.2008DFA11780), Canada-China Scientific
and
Technological
Cooperation
(No.2010DFA11320), NSFC (No. 60802033 and
60873190), the National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program)
of China (No.2008AA01Z211).

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