Analytic estimation for uplink capacity reduction due to co-channel interference in LTE networks

To achieve high system capacity, most fourth-generation (4G) cellular communication systems, including long term evolution (LTE), tend to adopt aggressive frequency reuse scheme. Although this scheme can increase system capacity, it has a major challenge of suffering severe intercell co-channel interference (CCI), which will reduce cell-edge user throughput and increase outage probability. In this paper, an analytical method is presented for estimating the uplink capacity reduction due to CCI in a cellular LTE network. This method is based on an interference analysis that accounts for random distribution of user locations, propagation shadow fading effect, and user-equipment output power limitations. The results indicate that CCI can cause up to 50 % reduction in throughput for cell-edge users. The proposed method is helpful for estimating the CCI impacts when building a 4G network.