Interference Mitigation and Power Minimization in 5G Heterogeneous Networks

Macro cells’ (MCs) densification with small cells (SCs) is one of the promising solutions to cope with the increasing demand for higher data rates in 5G heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Unfortunately, the interference that arises between these densely deployed SCs and their elevated power consumption have caused huge problems facing the 5G HetNets. In this paper, a new soft frequency reuse (SFR) scheme is proposed to minimize the interference and elevate the network throughput. The proposed scheme is based on on/off switching the SCs according to their interference contribution rate (ICR) values. It solves the interference problem of the densely deployed SCs by dividing the cell region into center and edge zones. Moreover, SCs on/off switching tackles the elevated power consumption problem and enhances the power efficiency of the 5G network. Furthermore, our paper tackles the irregular nature problem of 5G HetNets and compares between two different proposed shapes for the center zone of the SC: circular, and irregular shapes. Additionally, the optimum radius of the center zone, which maximizes the total system data rate, is obtained. The results show that the proposed scheme surpasses the traffic and the random on/off switching schemes, as it decreases the outage probability and enhances the total system data rate and power efficiency. Moreover, the results demonstrate the close performance of both the irregular and circular shapes for the center zone.