Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Improving Radio Resource Utilization and User Level Fairness in OFDMA Femtocell Networks

  • Published:
Wireless Personal Communications Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Poor indoor coverage and high cost of cellular network operators are among the main motivations for the employment of femtocell networks. Since femto access points (FAPs) and macrocells share same spectrum resources, radio resource allocation is an important challenge in OFDMA femtocell networks. Mitigating interference and improving fairness among FAPs are the main objectives in previous resource allocation methods. However, the main drawback is that user level fairness has not been adequately addressed in the previous methods, and moreover, most of them suffer from inefficient utilization of radio resources. In this paper, modeling the problem as a graph multi-coloring, a centralized algorithm is proposed to obtain both user level fairness and spectrum efficiency. This method employs a priority-based greedy coloring algorithm in order to increase the reuse factor and consequently the spectrum efficiency. Moreover, in situations where the number of available OFDM resources is not sufficient, the proposed method employs a novel fairness index to fairly share those remaining resources among users of FAPs. The performance comparison between the proposed and previous methods shows that the proposed method improves the balance between user-level fairness and resource utilization. In addition, the presented analyses show that the time complexity of the proposed method is less than that of conventional methods.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Index, C. V. N. (2011). Global mobile data traffic forecast update, 2010–2015. Cisco white paper.

  2. Andrews, J. G., Claussen, H., Dohler, M., Rangan, S., & Reed, M. C. (2012). Femtocells: Past, present, and future. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 30(3), 497–508.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Zhang, J., & De la Roche, G. (2010). Femtocells: Technologies and deployment. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  4. Chandrasekhar, V., Andrews, J., & Gatherer, A. (2008). Femtocell networks: A survey. IEEE Communications Magazine, 46(9), 59–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Piro, G., Grieco, L. A., Boggia, G., Capozzi, F., & Camarda, P. (2011). Simulating LTE cellular systems: An open-source framework. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 60(2), 498–513.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Mhiri, F., Sethom, K., & Bouallegue, R. (2013). A survey on interference management techniques in Femtocell self-organizing networks. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 36(1), 58–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Liang, Y.-S., Chung, W.-H., Ni, G.-K., Chen, Y., Zhang, H., & Kuo, S.-Y. (2012). Resource allocation with interference avoidance in OFDMA femtocell networks. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 61(5), 2243–2255.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Sankar, V. U., & Sharma, V. (2012). Subchannel allocation and power control in femtocells to provide quality of service. In IEEE national conference on communications (NCC) (pp. 1–5).

  9. Simsek, M., Czylwik, A., Galindo-Serrano, A., & Giupponi, L. (2011). Improved decentralized Q-learning algorithm for interference reduction in LTE-femtocells. In IEEE wireless advanced (WiAd) (pp. 138–143).

  10. Lee, K., Jo, O., & Cho, D.-H. (2011). Cooperative resource allocation for guaranteeing intercell fairness in femtocell networks. IEEE Communications Letters, 15(2), 214–216.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Yun, J.-H., & Shin, K. G. (2010). CTRL: A self-organizing femtocell management architecture for co-channel deployment. In ACM proceedings of the sixteenth annual international conference on Mobile computing and networking (pp. 61–72).

  12. Claussen, H. (2007). Performance of macro- and co-channel femtocells in a hierarchical cell structure. In IEEE 18th international symposium on personal, indoor and mobile radio communications (PIMRC) (pp. 1–5).

  13. Cao, G., Yang, D., & Zhang, X. (2012). A distributed algorithm combining power control and scheduling for femtocell networks. In IEEE wireless communications and networking conference (WCNC)(pp. 2282–2287).

  14. Lien, S.-Y., Tseng, C.-C., Chen, K.-C., & Su, C.-W. (2010). Cognitive radio resource management for QoS guarantees in autonomous femtocell networks. In IEEE international conference on communications (ICC) (pp. 1–6).

  15. Stefan, A. L., Ramkumar, M., Nielsen, R. H., Prasad, N. R., & Prasad, R. (2011). A QoS aware reinforcement learning algorithm for macro-femto interference in dynamic environments. In IEEE 3rd international congress on ultra modern telecommunications and control systems and workshops (ICUMT) (pp. 1–7).

  16. Huang, J. W., & Krishnamurthy, V. (2011). Cognitive base stations in LTE/3GPP femtocells: A correlated equilibrium game-theoretic approach. IEEE Transactions on Communications, 59(12), 3485–3493.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Wang, Y., Zheng, K., Shen, X., & Wang, W. (2011). A distributed resource allocation scheme in femtocell networks. In IEEE 73rd vehicular technology conference (VTC Spring) (pp. 1–5).

  18. Wang, S., Wang, J., Xu, J., Teng, Y., & Horneman, K. (2013). Fairness guaranteed cooperative resource allocation in femtocell networks. Wireless Personal Communications, 72(2), 957–973.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Lu, Z., Bansal, T., & Sinha, P. (2013). Achieving user-level fairness in open-access femtocell-based architecture. IEEE transactions on mobile computing, 12(10), 1943–1954.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Attar, A., Krishnamurthy, V., & Gharehshiran, O. N. (2011). Interference management using cognitive base-stations for UMTS LTE. IEEE Communications Magazine, 49(8), 152–159.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Beigy, H., & Meybodi, M. R. (2010). Cellular learning automata with multiple learning automata in each cell and its applications. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part B: Cybernetics, 40(1), 54–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Peltomaki, M., Koljonen, J., Tirkkonen, O., & Alava, M. (2012). Algorithms for self-organized resource allocation in wireless networks. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 61(1), 346–359.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Cho, T. K., Oh, C. Y., & Lee, T. J. (2013). Maximum achievement rate allocation algorithm for downlink multi-user OFDMA systems. Wireless Personal Communications, 70(4), 1425–1442.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Lopez-Perez, D., Ladanyi, A., Juttner, A., & Zhang, J. (2009). OFDMA femtocells: A self-organizing approach for frequency assignment. In IEEE 20th international symposium on personal, indoor and mobile radio communications (pp. 2202–2207).

  25. Zheng, K., Wang, Y., Lin, C., Shen, X., & Wang, J. (2011). Graph-based interference coordination scheme in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing access femtocell networks. IET Communications, 5(17), 2533–2541.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  26. Mehrotra, A., & Trick, M. A. (2007). A branch-and-price approach for graph multi-coloring. In E. K. Baker, A. Joseph, A. Mehrotra, & M. A. Trick (Eds.) Extending the horizons: Advances in computing, optimization, and decision technologies (pp. 15–29). Springer.

  27. Nguyen, K. D., Nguyen, H. N., & Morino, H. (2013). Performance study of channel allocation schemes for beyond 4G cognitive femtocell-cellular mobile networks. In IEEE eleventh international symposium on autonomous decentralized systems (ISADS) (pp. 1–6).

  28. Liang, Y. S., Chung, W. H., Yu, C. M., Zhang, H., Chung, C. H., Ho, C. H., & Kuo, S. Y. (2012). Resource block assignment for interference avoidance in femtocell networks. In IEEE vehicular technology conference (VTC Fall) (pp. 1–5).

  29. Jain, R. (1991). The art of computer systems performance analysis (Vol. 182). Chichester: John Wiley and Sons.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  30. Ling, X., & Yeung, K. L. (2005). Joint access point placement and channel assignment for 802.11 wireless LANs. In IEEE wireless communications and networking conference (Vol. 3, pp. 1583–1588).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Technology Engineering, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

    Omid Fallah-Mehrjardi, Behrouz Shahgholi Ghahfarokhi & Hamid Mala

  2. Department of Computer Engineering, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran

    Naser Movahhedinia

Authors
  1. Omid Fallah-Mehrjardi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Behrouz Shahgholi Ghahfarokhi
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Hamid Mala
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Naser Movahhedinia
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Omid Fallah-Mehrjardi.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Fallah-Mehrjardi, O., Ghahfarokhi, B.S., Mala, H. et al. Improving Radio Resource Utilization and User Level Fairness in OFDMA Femtocell Networks. Wireless Pers Commun 77, 2341–2358 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-014-1641-2

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11277-014-1641-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation