A local enhancement process to improve fairness and throughput in femtocell networks

Abstract

Spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency are the two formal rivals in telecommunication networks. Decreasing cell size in a cellular network is the only way to improve both and femtocell is the most recent technology to this end. Plug-and-play and non-coordinated distribution of femtocells yield some technical challenges. Providing fairness between femtocell base stations (FBSs) is one of the most critical one. In this paper, we propose a local enhancement process as a resource allocation optimization algorithm to improve fairness and throughput in femtocell networks. Different from previous approaches, either centralized or distributed, we are advocating the use of local optimizations where FBSs cooperatively achieve better fairness compared to state-of-the-art fairness algorithms without any aggregated throughput loss. Simulation results show that the proposed local enhancement process improves the fairness and throughput in femtocell networks.