The coexistence of a macrocell and a number of femtocells often leads to a two-tier heterogeneous network, where the co-tier interference (CotIN) and cross-tier interference (CrotIN) both degrade users' quality of service. In order to suppress these interferences, we propose a precoding scheme in a heterogeneous network with cooperative femtocells, called CotIN elimination and CrotIN suppression with precoding criterion selection (ESPS) scheme. In this scheme, we first eliminate the CotINs of each user by applying the QR decomposition to channel matrix. Then the CrotINs of macrocell users and femtocell users are suppressed via the macrocell base station (MBS) and femtocell access points (FAPs) with precoding criterion selection, respectively. By using the ESPS scheme, spatial resources can be efficiently exploited. In addition, our ESPS scheme requires little information exchange between MBS and FAPs without iteration and thus significantly reduces the implementation complexity. Furthermore, the robustness is increased through introducing the information of channel uncertainty into the ESPS when channel estimation or quantization error exists. The performance analysis for the ESPS demonstrates that the ESPS is practical in the heterogeneous networks. Finally, simulation results show that the ESPS can decrease users' bit error rates and increase their transmission rates. ESPS FOR TWO-TIER INTERFERENCE SUPPRESSION 2215 modes defined for femtocell such as open access mode, closed access mode, and hybrid access mode [2,12,13]. As a result, a conventional single-tier macrocell network is converted into a two-tier heterogeneous network, which may cause two types of interferences called the co-tier interference (CotIN) and cross-tier interference (CrotIN) no matter what access mode is applied. In a two-tier heterogeneous network, the CotINs mean the interferences among the macrocell users (MUs) or the FUs, and the CrotINs denote the interferences between the FUs and MUs. Therefore, both of the interferences should be alleviated in the network.In order to suppress the interferences, fractional frequency reuse [14-16] strategies can be utilized. However, spectrum resources are limited in the existing wireless networks; hence, it is necessary to investigate the interference suppression schemes by exploiting spatial resources. In this case, several previous works have been introduced. The schemes in [17,18] were introduced for the CotIN suppression. The authors in [19][20][21][22] presented schemes to reduce the CrotINs from femtocells to MUs or from the macrocell base station to FUs. Furthermore, Park et al. [23], Park et al.[24], and Dai et al.[25] adopted different schemes for suppressing both the types of CrotINs. Each of the aforementioned schemes just restrain the CotIN or CrotIN, while considering the other type of interference (CrotIN or CotIN) that can be ignored or ideally mitigated by interference coordination. However, in a realistic system, there may be multiple MUs and FUs that are served at the same time and ...