Analytic estimation for uplink capacity reduction due to co-channel interference in LTE networks

Abstract

To achieve high system capacity, most fourthgeneration (4G) cellular communication systems, including long term evolution (LTE), tend to adopt aggressive frequency reuse scheme. Although this scheme can increase system capacity, it has a major challenge of suffering severe intercell co-channel interference (CCI), which will reduce cell-edge user throughput and increase outage probability. In this paper, an analytical method is presented for estimating the uplink capacity reduction due to CCI in a cellular LTE network. This method is based on an interference analysis that accounts for random distribution of user locations, propagation shadow fading effect, and userequipment output power limitations. The results indicate that CCI can cause up to 50 % reduction in throughput for cell-edge users. The proposed method is helpful for estimating the CCI impacts when building a 4G network.