Interference Management via Space and Frequency Domain Resource Partitioning

Abstract: One key requirement for the fifth-Generation (5G) mobile system is the enhancement of cell edge user performance to ensure that every user is supported with consistent experience anywhere in the network. An active interference design to improve anywhere performance, particularly in the low SINR regime, can be achieved by applying a recently proposed new type of modulation scheme, frequency quadrature-amplitude modulation (FQAM), which could change the distribution of interference and therefore improve channel capacity. In this paper, a resource partitioning scheme to support FQAM in interference intensive scenarios is proposed. The proposed scheme slices radio resources into orthogonal parts for QAM and FQAM, respectively, along two different resource dimensions, namely, space and frequency. This can be achieved by incorporating advanced beamforming algorithms, e.g., full-dimension (FD-MIMO), and performing a frequency-based split of FQAM resources to effectively improve the data rate of the edge users experiencing heavy interference. Two resource partitioning mechanisms are proposed followed by complexity analysis. Evaluation results on both space and frequency-based FQAM interference management are presented, showing significant performance improvements when compared to the regular QAM modulation.