Uplink Performance of Dynamic Interference Coordination under Fractional Power Control for LTE-Advanced Femtocells

It has been identified in numerous contributions that dynamic interference coordination is very appealing in case of dense and uncoordinated deployments of home eNBs (eNBs), also known as femtocells. One of the proposed schemes for LTE-Advanced is known as Autonomous Component Carrier Selection (ACCS). Previous contributions presented extensive downlink performance results attesting the effectiveness of ACCS. Nonetheless, the uplink has its own set of specificities, such as the use of Fractional Power Control (FPC). In this light, the purpose of this paper is two-fold: (i) Provide qualitative and quantitative answers to questions such as what is the impact of FPC on femtocells and how to best configure it. (ii) Evaluate in detail the uplink performance of ACCS under realistic power control settings. Using results derived from extensive uplink system level simulations we show that the behavior of FPC when applied to femtocells is significantly different from that seen on macrocells. In addition we demonstrate that ACCS is equally attractive and applicable to the uplink even though most decisions are based on UE downlink measurements.