A survey on interference management techniques in femtocell self-organizing networks

The femtocell concept is an emerging technology for deploying the next generation of the wireless networks, aiming at indoor coverage enhancement, increasing capacity, and offloading the overlay macrocell traffic. Nevertheless, one of the most critical issues in femtocells is the potential interference between nearby femtocells and from femtocells to macrocells or to mobile handsets, thus mitigating the overall system capacity. In this paper, we have discussed mechanisms which can be deployed to lessen the interference and increase the user capacity. Therefore, we provide a survey on the different interference and resource management techniques in Self-Organizing Network according to specifics classification criteria. These techniques derive from the following approaches: power control, proper cell planning, frequency reuse, OFDMA, self-configuration and self-optimization, conventional TDD, etc. These techniques can be applied separately and can be used as hybrid. A qualitative comparison among the different approaches and techniques is provided at the end of this paper. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.