Co-channel Interference Mitigation Technique for
Mobile WiMAX Downlink System Deployed via
Stratospheric Platform
Iskandar and A. Abubaker
School of Electrical Engineering and Informatics, Bandung Institute of Technology
Jl. Ganesha No.10 Bandung 40132 Indonesia
E-mail: iskandar@stei.itb.itb.ac.id, abdallah@students.itb.ac.id
Abstract-This paper aim at evaluating an interference
mitigation technique proposed for Stratospheric Platform
(SPF) WiMAX downlink system. Performance evaluation of
mobile WiMAX system under impact of co-channels
interfering from the SPF antennas operating in the same
frequency band is proposed to be studied in this paper.
Several frequency reuse pattern are simulated to find the
best reuse pattern which means that they have a minimum
interference level. Simulation results clearly demonstrate
that the co-channel interference was dominant when
delivering mobile WiMAX via SPF and its performance can
be effectively improved using frequency reuse patterns.
Results relative to co-channel interfering evaluation, showed
an improvement on the system performance with increasing
frequency reuse pattern (from 1 to 3, or from 3 to 4). The
remaining results with respect to BER simulation indicate
how K Rice factor which is governed by elevation angle,
Doppler shifts due to mobility, and physical layer setting of
broadband system can contribute to the overall performance.
Finally, simulation results clarified that applying spatial
diversity at transmitter side can improve the performance at
low elevation angles.
Keywords: Mobile WiMAX; SPF; Co-Channel Interfering;
CINR.
I. INTRODUCTION
SPF are the novel wireless delivery method which
attracting much the attention to communication
community deployed at heights ranging between 17 and
22 km. They can be flying air craft’s for temporary
deployments, or stationary or quasi stationary air borne
platforms with a typical life time of weeks, months, or
years [1]. Recent advancements in aerodynamics, control
systems, avionics and power electronics have made
commercial realization of such platforms more feasible
than ever. SPF systems have many characteristics such as;
receiver elevation angle that high, the line of sight (LOS)
transmission, a wide coverage area, and the distribution of
the mobile, in addition SPF’s location is also believed that
there are insignificant effects in terms of wind speed and
weather. For these reasons, SPF is attracted much the
attention from telecommunication community in that it
serves as complimentary wireless delivery method to the
satellite and terrestrial systems.
On the same time, the mobile WiMAX IEEE 802.16e
standard uses Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple
Access (OFDMA), which is similar to OFDM in that it
divides the carriers into multiple subcarriers. WiMAX
(IEEE802.16e) is currently well-known technology that
widely accepted as the future air-interface broadband
standard capable of delivering several megabits of
shared data throughput for mobile operators using 11
GHz, 3.5 GHz, and later 2.3 and 5.8 GHz frequencies
depending on the international regulatory body [2].
SPF have been recommended by the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) to provide
communication in the mm-wave broadband wireless
access (BWA) communication frequency band and
third-generation (3G). Investigation on the SPF has been
concentrated on the mm-wave band and code division
multiple access (CDMA) scheme that is sent via SPF.
Using SPF as a base station to provide Mobile WiMAX
at a higher altitude is a way that can be cost-effective in
implementing the infrastructure.
Co-channel interfering due to SPF antennas serving
cells in the same frequency band is an issue which faces
the serious problem in a communication system quality.
It has a considerable effecting on the performance with
respect to interference power levels. In this contribution,
we used various frequency reuse patterns to mitigate the
interfering of SPF antennas that has been specified by
ITU for WiMAX downlink system. Our proposed
method is aimed to evaluate and mitigate the co-channel
interference caused by neighbor cell in the system. The
proposed method is then carried out by using computer
simulation to find an acceptable condition when mobile
WiMAX is deployed through SPF system.
The remaining part of this paper is outlined as
follows: In section II, we provide description of co-
channel interfering concept; section III represents the
SPF co-channel interfering model. Section IV shows
simulation result and its analysis; finally, concluding
remark is drawn in Section V.
II. CO-CHANNEL INTERFERENCE CONCEPT
Interference in a cellular communication is considered
as the major limiting factor in their performance. It has
sources include other users in the same cell, other base
stations operating the same frequency band, or any other
non-cellular system which inadvertently leaks energy
into the cellular frequency band. There are two major
types of system-generated interference. They are co-
channel interference and adjacent channel interference.
Co-channel interference occurs between cells that
use the same set of frequencies. Unlike thermal noise
which can be overcome by increasing the signal-to-noise
ratio, co-channel interfering cannot be combated by
increasing the power of a transmitter. This is because an
increasing in transmitted power increases the interference
to neighboring co-channel cells. To reduce co-channel
interference, co-channel cells should be separated by a
minimum distance to provide a sufficient isolation.
The co-channel interference ratio is independent of
transmitted power. It becomes a function of the cell radius
(R) and also the distance between centers of the nearest
co-channel cells which is called a reuse distance (D). This
condition apply when the size of each cell is the same and
the base stations transmit the same power. This condition
is commonly used in cell planning and design of cellular
system to minimize co-channel and adjacent channel
interference. By increasing the ratio of D/R, the separation
distance between co-channel cells is increased, thus the
interference is reduced from improved isolation of RF Fig. 1 SPF co-channel interference scenario.
energy from co-channel cell. The basic principle for a
hexagonal geometry cell, co-channel interference ratio is
given by:


  √3 . (1)


where N is a cell reuse patter and Q is co-channel

interference reduction factor.
A small value of Q gives larger capacity or high
spectral efficiency since the cluster size N is small.
Whereas a large value of Q improves the transmission
quality performance due to smaller levels of co-channel
interference. A trade-off between capacity and
transmission quality should be made in wireless system
design including in a cellular SPF WiMAX system.

III. SIMULATION MODEL

We assume there is one SPF floating in the air equipped
with multibeam antennas serving as a base station to
create a footprint that is called cell on the ground. The
user-of-interest is assumed to be located in SPF cell j
(reference cell) with coordinate of (
,
). When it  ϕ 2
communicates with the SPF antenna i, the user is
interfered by the SPF antennas i and k, which are assumed
to operate in the same frequency band as the antenna
serving the cell j, since each SPF antenna has its boresight
footprint in the centre of the corresponding cell. The co-
channel interference model is described in Fig. 1
representing that there are many base stations onboard the
platform.
User test is located in the center of reference cell
receiving co-channel interference from other user inside
reference cell and from other user located in the co-
channel cell. Two parameters are introduced to user
location. Those are user azimuth angle and user distance
from cell center represented by θ and d respectively.
These parameters then influence the value of Eb/N0 and
then CINR of each user location.
SPF, which is equipped with multi spotbeam phased
array antenna, is designed to create the cells on the
ground. The antenna pattern must have the specification
that comply to International Telecommunication Union
(ITU) recommendations. Its boresight gain according to
ITU specification and thus is used in the simulation is
given by the following expression [3]:
Fig. 2 SPF service area planning.

 34.8 − (1.57) ⇒ 0° ≤ ϕ ≤ 4.53° 
 
9.8 ⇒ 4.53° ≤ ϕ ≤ 5.87° , (2)
G(ϕ)ITU = 
55.95− 60log(ϕ) ⇒ 5.87° ≤ ϕ ≤ 37° 
 
 − 38 ⇒ 2.37° ≤ ϕ ≤ 90° 
where ϕ is the SPF antenna boresight angle represented
in degrees.
In this study, we divided SPF service area into 19
cells to create a suitable model of potential cell in
generating co-channel interference. Cell number 20 and
so forth are considered less significant to generate
interference. All cells of coverage area were
hexagonally arranged and clustered in different
frequency reuse patterns. The frequency allocated for
SPF cellular system can be reused with different
patterns, in this case N is termed as a size of the cluster
which decides the number of frequencies that can be
reused (or repeated) in the cellular system thus
frequency reuse factor is equal to 1/N. Due to hexagonal
geometry, chosen value of N should satisfy the
following formula [4]:

  
 
 . , (3)
where I, J are non-negative integers 0,1,2,3,..etc.
Hence 1, 3, and 4 are tested as values of N in this
simulation accordingly, the minimum distance between
the co-channels cells centers given in equation (1). For
N=1 this means that the whole band of frequency is used
in a cell and reused in each of the adjacent cells. While
N=3 and N=4; the allocated band is divided into 3 and 4
frequency bands respectively and there are no neighboring
cells have the same frequency in these two configurations.
In Figure 2 we can see the representation of SPF footprint
cells assigned the same frequency band, which are defined
as co-channel cells (depicted with same color) at N=1, 3,
and 4.
Performance evaluation of SPF-WiMAX downlink can
be described in terms of carrier to interference plus noise
ratio (CINR) and bit energy to power spectral density
(Eb/No) through the following equations:
   /
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
In this section, the CINR and Eb/N0 performance
evaluation under impact of co-channel interfering from
SPF antennas is presented with various frequency reuse
patterns. Simulation scenario parameters of co-channel
interfering model are depicted in Table 1. Three user
location in the reference cell are tested. First is θ = 00
means user location at x axes as original position and
then move to θ = 300 and finally θ = 600. While user
distance from cell center or d is varied up to maximum
1000 m. Two tier cell which resulting the total number
of 19 cells are simulated in this paper due to their high
power level lead to high level of co-channel
interference. Frequency reuse pattern N is chosen to be
1, 3, and 4 to evaluated the significance of co-channel
cell and to make trade off to the capacity evaluation.
In Figure 3 and 4 we describe a simulation result of
   ,
the value of Eb/N0 as a function to d that is user distance
∑" ! &'(# )
(4)
 #$% from cell center for three locations of user with refer to θ

!* = 0° then θ = 30° and finally θ = 60°. According to the
simulation result, it can be denoted that the best
performance is achieved at the user direction θ of 0°,
,-
 . /0 , (5) where the boresight of serving antenna is more pointing.
.
This is due to a smaller subtended angle at θ = 0° from
where: its boresight, therefore CINR will be high at θ = 0° then
12 is the transmitted power from SPF antennas. θ = 30° and finally θ = 60°.
/34  is SPF antenna gain relative to its boresight angle
TABLE 1 CO-CHANNEL INTERFERING SIMULATION PARAMETERS.
serving cell j.
34 is antenna boresight angle relative to cell j which can
obtained as follows: Parameter Value
SPF altitude 21km
:#
Carrier frequency 2.4GHz
34  tan89 , (6) WiMAX subchanlization gain 15dB
;
Cells layout 2tyres: 19cells

where <4 is the distance between user-of-interest and the

Maximum cell radius 1000m
Transmitted power 43dBm
centre of interfering cell j given as follows: SPF Boresight gain According to ITU Rec.
User directions inside the θ=0,30,60 deg

<4  =>
? 4 @  >
? 4 @ ,
refrence cell
(7) User antenna gain 0dB (omni antenna)
Thermal noise power -98dBm

, 
 is the user coordinate of the user given by: Frequency reuse pattern 1,3,and 4

 <. cos D (8)


 <. sin D (9)
17
Theta=0
where d is the user distance from centre of coverage, θ is Theta=30
16 Theta=60
the user direction within the reference cell, h is the SPF
altitude, and PL is the free path loss from SPF to the user
which is given by: 15
Eb/No(dB)

GH;
1F  ' ) (10) 14
I

J is wavelength of the carrier signal. Another parameter is

13

NL that is thermal noise power which can be given by:

12

F  K. L. MN . O (11)
11
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
where k is Boltzmann’ constant (-228.6 dBJ/K), T is noise user distance from cell centre(m)

equivalent temperature (300K), MN is WiMAX channel

bandwidth, O is noise figure at SPF antenna system
(4dB), and /0 is WiMAX subchannelization gain. Fig.3 Eb/No performance in a SPF-Downlink system with N=1.
 1 1

0.9 0.9

0.8 0.8

0.7 0.7

0.6 0.6
Pr(CINR<X)

Pr(CINR<X)
0.5 0.5

0.4 0.4

0.3 0.3
Theta=0
0.2 Theta=30
0.2 Theta=0
Theta=60
Theta=30
0.1 0.1 Theta=60

0 0
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
X (dB) X (dB)

Fig. 4 CDF of CINR in a SPF-Downlink system with N=1.

1 40

0.9
35
0.8

0.7
30
0.6 Fig. 6 CDF of CINR in a SPF-Downlink system with N=4.
Pr(CINR<X)

Eb/No(dB)

0.5 25

0.4 N=1
N=3
0.3 20
N=4
0.2 Theta=0 N=7
Theta=30
15
0.1 Theta=60

0
6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 10
X (dB) 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
user distance from cell centre(m)

Fig. 5 CDF of CINR in a SPF-Downlink system with N=3. Fig. 7 Eb/No performance comparison relative to various
frequency reuse patterns.

Presented in figures, 5 and 6 is the performance of should mainly focus on reducing excess power from co-
CINR with frequency reuse patterns of N=3 and N=4 channel interference.
respectively at user different directions within the In the SPF-WiMAX system considered in this study,
reference cell. It can be seen that impact of co-channel frequency reuse pattern of 1 does not yield acceptable
interfering from SPF antennas is mitigating with guard of service GoS as required for mobile WiMAX
increasing N from 1 to 3 or from 3 to 4 for any user services because of high interfering power level at cells
direction inside the coverage area. This is because of edge; yet frequency reuse as tight as 3 or as 4 can be
increasing the separation distance D between co-cells used to achieve an acceptable GoS. However trade of
centers thus the interfering will decrease. However if N between reducing co-channel and system capacity
increased to next value (N=7) which requires 7 new should be taken in system design.
frequencies to be reused, the system performance affected
by co-channel interfering will improve a little bit around
0.7 dB for Eb/No compared to N=4 as it is shown in REFERENCES
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