New framework for interference and energy analysis of soft frequency reuse in 5G networks

Cellular networks are expanding massively due to high data requirements
from mobile devices. This has motivated base station densification as
an essential requirement for the 5G network. The implication is obvious
benefits in enhanced system capacity, but also increased challenges in terms
of interference. One important interference management technique which has
been widely adopted in cellular networks is frequency reuse. In this article,
an analysis is presented based on network interference and energy expended
by base stations in downlink communication when Soft frequency reuse
(SFR) is deployed. A framework is presented that captures the bandwidth
overlaps in SFR across base station assignments, computes the interference
probabilities arising and derives new performance equations which
are verified using simulations. Results show an improvement of 43% over
previous SFR implementations that do not consider the interference
probabilities. Thus, a more in-depth and accurate modelling of SFR in 5G
networks is achieved. Furthermore, the downlink power allocation
is investigated as against other parameters like the center ratio and edge
bandwidth. The result shows that signal-to-interference-noise ratio (SINR)
and spectral efficiency give different performance under energy
consideration. A framework is developed on how to tune a base station to
achieve desired network performance in