Expressions are derived for the coverage probability and average rate of both multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) and single input multiple output (SIMO) systems in the context of a fractional frequency reuse (FFR) scheme. In particular, given a reuse region of 1/3 (FR3) and a reuse region of 1 (FR1) as well as a signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) threshold Sth, which decides the user assignment to either the FR1 or FR3 regions, we theoretically show that: 1) the optimal choice of Sth which maximizes the coverage probability is Sth = T, where T is the target SINR required for ensuring adequate coverage, and 2) the optimal choice of Sth which maximizes the average rate is given by Sth = T′, where T′ is a function of the path loss exponent, the number of antennas and of the fading parameters. The impact of frequency domain correlation amongst the OFDM sub-bands allocated to the FR1 and FR3 cell-regions is analysed and it is shown that the presence of correlation reduces both the coverage probability and the average throughput of the FFR network. Furthermore, the performance of our FFR-aided MU-MIMO and SIMO systems is compared. Our analysis shows that the (2 x 2) MU-MIMO system achieves 22.5% higher rate than the (1 x 3) SIMO system and for lower target SINRs, the coverage probability of a (2 x 2) MU-MIMO system is comparable to a (1 x 3) SIMO system. Hence the former one may be preferred over the latter. Our simulation results closely match the analytical results. © 2015 IEEE.