This paper investigates the application of inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC) in heterogeneous networks for the LTE-Advanced downlink where picocells are overlaid onto macrocells. In LTE-Advanced, in order to perform ICIC, almost blank subframes (ABSs) are employed, where only the cell-specific reference signal (CRS) is transmitted to protect the subframes in the picocells from severe interference from the macrocells. Furthermore, multicast/broadcast over single-frequency network (MBSFN) subframes are employed to reduce the interference of the CRS on the data channel, although the control channel still suffers from interference from the CRS. When the cell range expansion (CRE), which offload the UEs from macrocells to picocells, is used to improve the system performance, the influence from the CRS increases. In order to assess the influence, the required CRE bias to improve the data channel is investigated based on a system-level simulation under various conditions such as the number of picocells, the protected subframe ratio, and the user distribution. The simulation results show that the cell-edge user throughput is improved with the CRE bias of more than 8 dB, employing ABSs. Furthermore, simulation results show that one dominant source of interference is observed for the sets of user equipment (UEs) connected to the picocells via CRE with such a bias value. Based on observation, the influence that the CRS has on the control channel, i.e., physical control format indicator channel (PCFICH), and physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) is investigated based on a link-level simulation combined with a system-level simulation. The simulation results show that protecting the PCFICH is very important compared to protecting the PDCCH, since the block error rate (BLER) performance of the PCFICH becomes worse than the required BLER of 10-3 to support various conditions, although the BLER performance of the PDCCH can exceed the required BLER of 10-2 by spanning the PDCCH over three OFDM symbols.

In Long-Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced, a heterogeneous network in which femtocells and picocells overlay macrocells is being extensively discussed in addition to traditional well-planned macrocell deployment to improve further the system throughput. In heterogeneous network deployment, cell selection as well as inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC) is very important to improve the system and cell-edge throughput. Therefore, this paper investigates three cell selection methods associated with ICIC in heterogeneous networks in the LTE-Advanced downlink: Signal-to-interference plus noise power ratio (SINR)-based cell selection, reference signal received power (RSRP)-based cell selection, and reference signal received quality (RSRQ)-based cell selection. The results of simulations (4 picocells and 25 sets of user equipment are uniformly located within 1 macrocell) that assume a full buffer model show that the downlink cell and cell-edge user throughput levels of RSRP-based cell selection are degraded by approximately 2% and 11% compared to those for SINR-based cell selection under the condition of maximizing the cell-edge user throughput due to the impairment of the interference level. Furthermore, it is shown that the downlink cell-edge user throughput of RSRQ-based cell selection is improved by approximately 5%, although overall cell throughput is degraded by approximately 6% compared to that for SINR-based cell selection under the condition of maximizing the cell-edge user throughput.