Enhanced cognitive femtocell approach for co-channel downlink interference avoidance

The deployment of low-power nodes such as femtocells within the macrocell’s coverage area is one of the main features of future 5G networks. However, challenges arise in the femtocell planning and management particularly due to interference occuring when they are deployed in a co-channel with the macrocell. The cognitive radio inspired femtocell is one of the solutions to mitigate interference. In the presented paper, the the cognetive scheme is enhanced by enabling the femtocell to takes advantage of the LTE channel dependent scheduling to predict the future resources of the nearby victim macro-users and avoids utilising them. Simulation results show that the co-channel interference on the macrocell downlink signal is minimal, and therefore the performance is improved, under the condition that the cognitive femtocell operates adaptively and monitors the spectrum allocations countinuously