Centralized macrocell muting at subchannel level in LTE heterogeneous networks

Enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (e-ICIC) is a technique for improving the performance of small cells in LTE heterogeneous networks. By using almost blank subframes (ABSs), the performance of range extension (RE) UEs in small cells can be improved. However, due to the different user numbers and needs in small cells, the configuration of ABSs in a macro cell may not be appropriate to each small cell deployed in it. This disadvantage can affect the improvement of system performance, especially when the number of small cells increases. To further improve the system performance, in this paper we propose a centralized macrocell muting scheme. In this scheme, macrocells will be muted at subchannel level instead of subframe level. Meanwhile, the fairness among different user types is taken into consideration. Simulation results show that our centralized muting scheme improves the throughput and fairness performance compared with non-ABS and ABS schemes.