Inter-cell interference can be seen as a huge challenge towards meeting the high capacity and coverage targets, as envisioned in 5G era. To this end, factors like the expected high density of access nodes reusing the same spectrum, the diverse sources of interference from heterogeneous access technologies, flexible wireless backhauling and the consideration of multiple 5G services with different KPIs can have strong impact on the way interference management is handled. This paper discusses three key interference management drivers, as good candidates for service-tailored optimization, which aim improving users’ performance in terms of cell-edge throughput, provide energy-efficiency aware resource management and minimize the signalling overhead using BS clustering and context-awareness.

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