A SIC-Based BS Coordination Scheme for Full Duplex Cellular Networks

Full Duplex (FD) in cellular networks is expected to increase the cell spectral efficiency. However, while the downlink (DL) spectral efficiency (SE) increases with FD, the uplink (UL) SE decreases because of the Base Station to Base Station (BS) interference. In this paper, assuming a three-node model, we propose a method based on Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) to reduce the BS-to-BS interference present in FD cellular networks. The approach consists in coordinating BSs to enable the decoding and the suppression of undesired signals that impair uplink transmissions. We analyze both distributed and Centralized Radio Access Networks (CRAN) architectures. Stochastic geometry is used to derive the coverage probability and mean data rate of the proposed scheme. In the distributed scenario, the FD UL average data rate is increased by 25% with our solution compared to a classical FD network, while our FD scheme still outperforms Half-Duplex (HD) on the DL. In the centralized scenario, our solution outperforms HD by 10% and classical FD by 78% on the UL, while preserving classical FD gains on the DL.