Effects of Base-Station Spatial Interdependence on Interference Correlation and Network Performance

Abstract: The spatial-and-temporal correlation of interference has been well studied in Poisson networks where the interfering base stations (BSs) are independent of each other. However, there exists spatial interdependence including attraction and repulsion among the BSs in practical wireless networks, affecting the interference distribution and hence the network performance. In view of this, by modeling the network as a Poisson clustered process, we quantify the effects of spatial interdependence among BSs on the interference correlation and analytically prove that BS clustering increases the level of interference correlation. In particular, it is shown that the level increases as the attraction between the BSs increases. Furthermore, we study the effects of spatial interdependence among BSs on network performance with a retransmission scheme via considering heterogeneous cellular networks in which small-cell BSs exhibit a clustered topology in practice. It is shown that the interference correlation degrades the network performance and the degradation increases as the attraction between BSs increases. Finally, a correlation-aware retransmission scheme is proposed to improve the network performance by taking advantage of the interference correlation and avoiding the blind retransmissions.