Frequency Reuse for 4G Technologies: A Survey

In recent years the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks have become rapid growing technologies in 4 Generation (4G) cellular wireless broadband systems. With the growing demand of these networks in everyday life, the service providers are offering different and better grade of services to satisfy the end users with increasing needs for higher quality of experience (QoE). These high capacity networks are defined and designed to consider and accommodate small and high performance as well as powerefficient end-users devices. However, the network performances are highly hampered by the influence of two main limiting factors known as Inter-Cell Interference (ICI) and Co-Channel interference (CCI). These ICIs are caused from the interferences in neighboring cells while CCIs are caused from the interference in adjacent channels. In this paper we provided with the lists of works have been carried out as the solutions of these interference issues to address user demands and maintain the quality of service (QoS) and QoE. Some existing frequency reuse schemes for LTE and WiMAX are presented with the aim of providing better QoS and universal connectivity to the end users’ mobile devices. The techniques are categorized in different ways for each network and a comprehensive summary is made on advantages and weaknesses of these techniques. This work presents an overview of an active study of different frequency reuse approaches in 4G networks and introduces the challenges in implementing them in the mentioned networks.