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Further Enhanced ICIC (FeICIC)

About Frank RayalTelecom industry management consultant.

May 7, 2014

Guest post by Faris Alfarhan*

In an earlier post, R10-LTE enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) techniques for
heterogeneous networks were discussed, along with the concept of small cell range expansion.
The purpose of cell range expansion is to offload more traffic from macro cells to small cells and
hence achieve larger cell splitting gains. By adding a cell selection bias, the service area of small
cells increases and more users are offloaded to small cells. The need for heterogeneous networks
interference management schemes stems from the fact that users in the small cell range
expansion area are vulnerable to stronger interference signals than useful signals from the
associated serving small cell. In the previous post, it was explained how time domain partitioning
based eICIC schemes known as Almost Blank Subframes (ABS) could be used to control the
interference on the data channels in the range expansion region. Further, carrier aggregation
based techniques known as Cross Carrier Scheduling could be used to control interference on
the control channels (such as the PDCCH, PCFICH, and PHICH channels). However, R10 eICIC
schemes did not address interference control on cell-specific reference signals (CRS), which
cannot be blanked in order to ensure backward compatibility with R8 and R9 UEs. In this post,
R11 improvements to eICIC schemes are discussed, along with the shortcomings of R10 eICIC
schemes. First, the concept of Reduced Power Almost Blank Subframes (RP-ABS) is explained
along with its advantages over ABS. I then discuss the R11 techniques of Further enhanced ICIC
(FeICIC) to control the interference on CRS resources.

Reduced Power Almost Blank Subframes ABS requires the macro cell to completely blank
the transmit power on PDSCH resource elements in almost blank subframes. This effectively
translates into resource loss that is a result of the TDM split of the LTE radio frame into eICIC
subframes and non-eICIC subframes. While the small cell could use eICIC and non-eICIC
subframes, the macro cells could only use non-eICIC subframes to schedule its users. With
reduced power almost blank subframes on the other hand, the macro cell doesnt completely
blank the power on eICIC subframes, as it could use these subframes with reduced power to
serve cell center users in the macro cell. This of course requires intelligent scheduling and
coordination between the macro cell and the coordinated small cells. The amount of power
reduction could be static, for example the power reduction in eICIC subframes could be equal to
the range expansion bias in dB, or dynamic, which is more optimal but requires better
coordination. The capacity gain from using reduced power subframes over almost blank
subframes depends on the ratio of eICIC subframes to non-eICIC subframes within a radio frame
and the intelligence of the scheduling and coordination. With static RP-ABS, the split of eICIC
subframes to non-eICIC subframes is usually fixed and the amount of power reduction is fixed as
well for all eICIC subframes. With dynamic RP-ABS, the small cell scheduler must
communicate with the macro cell scheduler to exchange the amount of eICIC resource blocks
and the corresponding required power reduction on each eICIC resource block. The macro cell
scheduler then allocates the RP-ABS resource blocks to cell centers, where the quality of RP-
ABS resource blocks are ranked in terms of fading and power reduction then allocated to cell
center to achieve the desired quality of experience determined by the scheduling goal. A typical
choice for the power reduction per user is the difference in received reference powers between
the interfering macro cell and the small cell. In order to have effective coordination, backhaul X2
links between the macro cell and the coordinated small cells must have relatively low latencies.
The good news is that only coordination of scheduling decisions is the required, which doesnt
require a lot of backhaul bandwidth but requires low latency. As the degree of coordination of
scheduling decisions nears perfection, the described dynamic RP-ABS scheme becomes almost
identical to the Coordinated Scheduling feature in Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP). It is worth
noting that achieving perfect coordination between macro and small cell nodes requires a
centralized coordination structure (e.g. cloud RAN). The RP-ABS implementation details are not
standardized by 3GPP, as they are vendor specific.

An illustration of the difference between ABS and RP-ABS.

CRS Signal Interference While R10 eICIC schemes handle the macro cell interference on the
data and control channels in the range expansion region, they do not address interference
handling of CRS signals (Cell-specific Reference Signals). In eICIC subframes, the CRS must
still be transmitted to support UE measurements and reporting of legacy UEs. CRS interference
could be detrimental for the demodulation of various data and control channels. With reference
signals frequency hopping, the CRS symbols of neighbouring cells are classified as non-
colliding and CRS symbols interfere with data and control symbols. Without reference signals
frequency hopping, CRS symbols of neighbouring cells are classified as colliding and CRS
symbols interfere with CRS symbols of neighbouring cells, which leads to poor channel
estimation. With R11 FeICIC schemes, both cases of CRS interference can be either avoided by
the transmitter or removed by the receiver.

The receiver based FeICIC approach relies on interference cancellation at the UE to eliminate the
dominant CRS interference, which requires estimating the dominant interfering CRS at the
receiver. This should not be problematic for the UE in the case of non-colliding CRS, since the
UE is able to distinguish the strong interferers then select the dominant interferer. Once the UE
estimates the CRS of the strongest interferer, it subtracts it from the received signal. It is worth
noting that the UE could perform this process for multiple interferers, but it would require an
iterative process to subtract each interfering signal. However, it is not advisable to cancel the
interference from weak interferers, as it would difficult to estimate such signals; weak CRS
interference does not significantly contribute to the overall interference, so there is little harm in
neglecting it at the receiver. Therefore, cancelling the dominant interfering CRS brings the bulk
of the benefit. In the case of colliding CRS, the UE may find some trouble estimating the
interfering reference signals. Transmitter based assistance is important in such case, as the UE
requires information from the network regarding which cells are suitable for CRS cancellation at
the UE.

The transmit based FeICIC approach rely on muting PDSCH resource elements within a small
cell ABS that experiences strong interference from macro CRS. In addition, rate matching is then
applied to compensate for the minor PDSCH resource loss by changing the rate of coding and
rate matching. The approach is illustrated in Figure 2 for the non-colliding CRS case. In such
case, the transmitter mutes PDSCH resource elements vulnerable to strong CRS interference.
However, in order to support legacy UEs, this type of muting is not currently feasible for the
downlink control channels, as PDCCH resource could not be muted or rate matched.

Transmit-based FeICIC CRS interference avoidance in almost blank subframes.

In a 3GPP contribution, Ericsson illustrates the throughput capacity gains achieved from using
reduced power subframes over almost blank subframes. The study shows that ABS can only
provide small capacity gains in highly loaded non-full buffer traffic profiles, whereas RP-ABS
could provide substantial gains in system performance over ABS. The study also shows the
adverse effect of not handling CRS interference in the range expansion region. The simulations
show that suppressing CRS interference from strongest neighboring cell can significantly
improve the cell edge throughput.