Method and apparatus for control channel protection in heterogeneous cellular networks

摘要

The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for protecting a control channel of a neighboring or overlapping cell (10) from interference caused by a target cell (12) in a cellular network. To achieve this, the presence of a victim terminal device (30) served by the neighboring or overlapping cell (10) is determined and potential resources of the victim terminal device (30) in the control channel of the neighboring or overlapping cell are identified. A collision metric for channel resources in the target cell (12) is calculated that indicates a degree of collision with the potential resources used for the control channel of the victim terminal device (30) in the neighboring or overlapping cell (10). Resources are allocated to a control and data channel of the target cell (12) based on the collision metric.