A Novel Frequency Planning for Femtocells in OFDMA-Based Cellular Networks Using Fractional Frequency Reuse

Femtocells are expected to be one of the emerging technologies for next generation communication systems. For successful deployment of femtocells in the pre-existing macrocell networks, there are some challenges such as the cell planning for interference management, handoff, and power control. In this paper, we focus on frequency planning which can provide interference avoidance for the co-existence of macrocells and femtocells. We propose a novel frequency planning for femtocells in cellular networks using fractional frequency reuse (FFR). We consider downlink performance of cellular systems based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Access (OFDMA), e.g., WiMAX and 3GPP Long Term Evaluation (LTE). Simulation results show that our scheme indeed reduces the effect of additional co-channel interference (CCI) between a given macrocell and deployed femtocells as well as neighboring macrocells.