Coverage Analysis of Reduced Power Subframes Applied in Heterogeneous Networks with Subframe Misalignment Interference

IEEE In heterogeneous networks (HetNets), to reduce the interference to users in Cell Range Expansion (CRE) areas of small cells, Reduced Power Subframes (RPSs) are used by macro base stations (BSs) to serve their center region users. CRE users can receive full power subframes (FPSs) from small-cell BSs in the same time slots as RPSs. However, it is difficult to maintain strict subframe alignment (SA) between neighbouring cells. Subframe misalignment (SM) between RPSs and FPSs transmitted by neighbouring macro BSs and small-cell BSs may degrade the coverage performance for macrocell center and small-cell CRE users. With existing time synchronization techniques used in HetNets, the SM offsets are actually upper-bounded. In this letter, we propose a novel SM model for a two-tier HetNet adopting RPSs with SM offsets restricted within a subframe duration, and analyse the coverage probability under the effects of RPSs and SM based on stochastic geometry. The results show that the strict SA requirement can be relaxed by up to 20% of subframe duration with below 5% coverage loss.