A First Look at Inter-Cell Interference in the Wild
Fuente:
arXiv
Guardado en:
| Autores principales: | , , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | Preprint |
| Publicado: |
2025
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | |
| Etiquetas: |
Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
|
| _version_ | 1866911125791047680 |
|---|---|
| author | Ding, Daqian Pi, Yibo Chen, Cailian |
| author_facet | Ding, Daqian Pi, Yibo Chen, Cailian |
| contents | In cellular networks, inter-cell interference management has been studied for decades, yet its real-world effectiveness remains under-explored. To bridge this gap, we conduct a first measurement study of inter-cell interference for operational 4G/5G networks. Our findings reveal the prevalence of inter-cell interference and a surprising absence of interference coordination among operational base stations. As a result, user equipments experience unnecessary interference, which causes significant signal quality degradation, especially under frequency-selective channel fading. We examine the inter-cell interference issues from four major perspectives: network deployment, channel assignment, time-frequency resource allocation, and network configuration. In none of these dimensions is inter-cell interference effectively managed. Notably, even when spectrum resources are underutilized and simple strategies could effectively mitigate inter-cell interference, base stations consistently prioritize using the same set of time-frequency resources, causing interference across cells. Our measurements reveal substantial opportunities for improving signal quality by inter-cell interference management. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_20060 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | A First Look at Inter-Cell Interference in the Wild Ding, Daqian Pi, Yibo Chen, Cailian Networking and Internet Architecture In cellular networks, inter-cell interference management has been studied for decades, yet its real-world effectiveness remains under-explored. To bridge this gap, we conduct a first measurement study of inter-cell interference for operational 4G/5G networks. Our findings reveal the prevalence of inter-cell interference and a surprising absence of interference coordination among operational base stations. As a result, user equipments experience unnecessary interference, which causes significant signal quality degradation, especially under frequency-selective channel fading. We examine the inter-cell interference issues from four major perspectives: network deployment, channel assignment, time-frequency resource allocation, and network configuration. In none of these dimensions is inter-cell interference effectively managed. Notably, even when spectrum resources are underutilized and simple strategies could effectively mitigate inter-cell interference, base stations consistently prioritize using the same set of time-frequency resources, causing interference across cells. Our measurements reveal substantial opportunities for improving signal quality by inter-cell interference management. |
| title | A First Look at Inter-Cell Interference in the Wild |
| topic | Networking and Internet Architecture |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20060 |