Patent ID: 7813739

Claim:
A method for reducing inter-cell interference in a wireless frequency division multiplexing network, in which the network includes a set of base stations, and in which an area served by each base station forms a cell, and in which each cell includes a set of mobile stations served by the base station, and in which an area of overlap between the cells form an interference zone, and in which a remaining area of the cells not including the interference zone form a non-interference zone, and in which a spectrum of radio frequencies used by each base station is identical, and in which the spectrum is partitioned into subcarriers, comprising: allocating the subcarriers randomly to the set of mobile stations in the non-interference zone, in which the allocated subcarriers become unavailable, and the remaining subcarriers in the spectrum are available; allocating the available subcarriers or blocks of subcarriers randomly by each base station if the selected strategy is random allocation; allocating the available subcarriers or blocks of subcarriers randomly by one base station and allocating the subcarriers optimally by an other base station if the selected strategy is blind allocation; allocating the available subcarriers or blocks of subcarriers optimally by each base station if the selected strategy is joint optimization; and selecting in each base station a strategy to allocate the available subcarriers to the set of mobile stations in the interference zone, in which the strategy is selected from random allocation, blind optimization, and joint optimization.