Abstract

Heterogeneous networking of small cells such as pico/femtocells over the existing macrocell network is believed to augment the data rate requirement in forthcoming years. Closed access operation of femtocell base station (FBS) and shared spectrum assignment in the two-tier macro-femtocell network leads to unacceptable deterioration in achieved data rate of femtocell users. In this work, application of computationally efficient neural network to perform adaptive FBS transmit power control is proposed for mitigation of interference in two-tier heterogeneous network formed by macro-femtocells and to improve the Quality of Service perceived by femtocell users. A Neuro-controller is designed to regulate the FBS transmission power based on the channel quality indicator measurement report sent by user equipment. Since the proposed power control strategy employs the channel side information already available in the existing network, there would not be any signaling overhead to mitigate the co-tier interference. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed power control strategy which provides significant improvement in achieved data rate of femtocell users and prevents them from outage.