A Comprehensive Survey on Various ICIC Schemes and Proposed 3G RF Interference Mitigation Techniques for OFDM Downlink on Cellular Networks

Inter Cell Interference (ICI) still poses a real challenge that limits the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Access (OFDMA) system performance, especially for users located at the cell edge. A common Inter Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC) technique is interference avoidance in which the allocation of the various system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power) to users is controlled to ensure that the ICI remains within acceptable limits. This paper surveys the various ICIC avoidance schemes in the downlink of OFDMA based cellular networks and makes use of these classifications to categorize and review various static (Frequency Reuse (FR) based) and dynamic (Cell Coordination-based) ICIC schemes. A comprehensive survey that investigate such wide range in the area of ICIC as an attempt to resolve ambiguity by providing precise classification in the research community is presented. A proposed 3G RF interference mitigation techniques is provided as well. For next generation of mobile communication systems; LTE (Long Term Evolution) is being standardized by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) ISO; this paper highlights the trend toward LTE commercial launch in heterogeneous network (HetNet) environment and the future plan for LTE?Advanced (LTE-A) new releases.