Joint beamforming and power control technique for femtocell networks

Abstract

The need for high data rate increases with the growing demand for wireless communication. In order to meet this demand, one of the most effective ways is deployment of small cells which are considered as a promising technique for future wireless networks. However, the deployment of these low-power base stations brings many challenges. Interference management will be one of the major drawbacks for the deployment of small cells in coverage of the macro base stations. In order to cope with interference problem, we propose a joint beamforming and power allocation technique for a two-tier network system involving femtocell and macrocell layers to design power efficient networks. The beamforming technique is applied by using partial zero-forcing method to remove the highest cross-tier interference while satisfying the macro and femtocell users’ data rate requirements. Then, we perform power allocation to further reduce interference and design power efficient femtocell networks. The performance results of the proposed technique are illustrated in terms of power consumption in femtocell networks.