I am working on co-deployment of macrocell and picocell, and I would like to implement cell range expansion on picocell to see how it enhance users selection.
In multitier cellular systems some parameters should be considered. If you expand the picocell range, interference should be set below a predefined value. It depends on system considerations. In addition, if you expand the picocell range, your propagation model may be changed. Moreover, frequency reuse factor may be decreased by increasing the picocell radius.
In heterogeneous networks, the cells of different sizes are referred to as macro-, micro-, pico- and femto-cells; listed in order of decreasing base station power.
The pico cell can be co-located within a macrocell so as to offload the load of macrocell to pico cell whenever required.
This will enhance the system capacity. But, it brings interference.
Normally mobile latches on to the cell with the strongest received DL signal (SSDL). A major issue in heterogeneous network planning is to ensure that the small cells actually serve enough users. One way to do that is to increase the area served by the small cell, which can be done through the use of a positive cell selection offset to the SSDL of the small cell. This is called Cell Range Extension (CRE). The CRE region will have interference problem.
However, this problem can be mitigated by using (1) Inter-cell Interference Coordination, (2) Carrier Aggregation with cross-carrier scheduling, and (3) Coordinated Multi Point.
Actually I am now working on this topic and pretty much stuck in the coding part. Can you please share, any Matlab source code related to CRE and eICIC technique? Your any kind of help is appreciated. Thanks.