Distributed resource allocation in small cellular networks - Test-bed experiments and results

The advent of femto-cellular base stations brings with it a promise for increased cellular coverage and capacity. However, several challenges need to be met in order to fulfil these promises. Femto-cells are likely to be deployed in an adhoc manner due to the infeasibility of carrying out comprehensive spectrum planning as in legacy cellular networks. One of the major issues with such a deployment is the problem of interference between cells. It is possible that femto-cells may interfere with their neighboring cells if they use the same frequency resources. This paper proposes a distributed radio resource management (DRRM) algorithm to address this problem and studies its performance through experiments in a test-bed. Results from this study indicate that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve performance compared to the randomized allocation regime. In light of the deployment considerations, the results are particularly significant given the simplicity and practicality of the proposed solution.