Recent advances in radio resource management for heterogeneous LTE/LTE-A networks

As heterogeneous networks (HetNets) emerge as one of the most promising developments toward realizing the target specifications of Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) networks, radio resource management (RRM) research for such networks has, in recent times, been intensively pursued. Clearly, recent research mainly concentrates on the aspect of interference mitigation. Other RRM aspects, such as radio resource utilization, fairness, complexity, and QoS, have not been given much attention. In this paper, we aim to provide an overview of the key challenges arising from HetNets and highlight their importance. Subsequently, we present a comprehensive survey of the RRM schemes that have been studied in recent years for LTE/LTE-A HetNets, with a particular focus on those for femtocells and relay nodes. Furthermore, we classify these RRM schemes according to their underlying approaches. In addition, these RRM schemes are qualitatively analyzed and compared to each other. We also identify a number of potential research directions for future RRM development. Finally, we discuss the lack of current RRM research and the importance of multi-objective RRM studies

Fair resource allocation with interference mitigation and resource reuse for LTE/LTE-A femtocell networks

Joint consideration of interference, resource utilization, fairness, and complexity issues is generally lacking in existing resource allocation schemes for Long-Term Evolution (LTE)/LTE-Advanced femtocell networks. To tackle this, we employ a hybrid spectrum allocation approach whereby the spectrum is split between the macrocell and its nearby interfering femtocells based on their resource demands, whereas the distant femtocells share the entire spectrum. A multiobjective problem is formulated for resource allocation between femtocells and is decomposed using a lexicographic optimization approach into two subproblems. A greedy algorithm of reasonably low complexity is proposed to solve these subproblems sequentially. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves substantial throughput and packet loss improvements in low-density femtocell deployment scenarios while performing satisfactorily in high-density femtocell deployment scenarios with substantial complexity and overhead reduction. The proposed scheme also performs nearly as well as the optimal solution obtained by exhaustive search

Multi-objective resource allocation for LTE/LTE-A femtocell/HeNB networks using ant colony optimization

Existing femtocell resource allocation schemes for Long Term Evolution or LTE-Advanced femtocell networks do not jointly achieve efficient resource utilization, fairness guarantee, interference mitigation and reduced complexity in a satisfactory manner. In this paper, a multi-objective resource allocation scheme is proposed to achieve these desired features simultaneously. We first formulate three objective functions to respectively maximize resource utilization efficiency, guarantee a high degree of fairness and minimize interference. A weighted sum approach is then used to combine these objective functions to form a single multi-objective optimization problem. An ant colony optimization algorithm is employed to find the Pareto-optimal solution to this problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme performs jointly well in all aspects, namely resource utilization, fairness and interference mitigation. Additionally, it maintains satisfactory performance in the handover process and has a reasonably low complexity compared to the existing schemes

Review on Radio Resource Allocation Optimization in LTE/LTE-Advanced using Game Theory

Recently, there has been a growing trend toward ap-plying game theory (GT) to various engineering fields in order to solve optimization problems with different competing entities/con-tributors/players. Researches in the fourth generation (4G) wireless network field also exploited this advanced theory to overcome long term evolution (LTE) challenges such as resource allocation, which is one of the most important research topics. In fact, an efficient de-sign of resource allocation schemes is the key to higher performance. However, the standard does not specify the optimization approach to execute the radio resource management and therefore it was left open for studies. This paper presents a survey of the existing game theory based solution for 4G-LTE radio resource allocation problem and its optimization

Interference mitigation in cognitive femtocell networks

“A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy”.Femtocells have been introduced as a solution to poor indoor coverage in cellular communication which has hugely attracted network operators and stakeholders. However, femtocells are designed to co-exist alongside macrocells providing improved spatial frequency reuse and higher spectrum efficiency to name a few. Therefore, when deployed in the two-tier architecture with macrocells, it is necessary to mitigate the inherent co-tier and cross-tier interference. The integration of cognitive radio (CR) in femtocells introduces the ability of femtocells to dynamically adapt to varying network conditions through learning and reasoning. This research work focuses on the exploitation of cognitive radio in femtocells to mitigate the mutual interference caused in the two-tier architecture. The research work presents original contributions in mitigating interference in femtocells by introducing practical approaches which comprises a power control scheme where femtocells adaptively controls its transmit power levels to reduce the interference it causes in a network. This is especially useful since femtocells are user deployed as this seeks to mitigate interference based on their blind placement in an indoor environment. Hybrid interference mitigation schemes which combine power control and resource/scheduling are also implemented. In a joint threshold power based admittance and contention free resource allocation scheme, the mutual interference between a Femtocell Access Point (FAP) and close-by User Equipments (UE) is mitigated based on admittance. Also, a hybrid scheme where FAPs opportunistically use Resource Blocks (RB) of Macrocell User Equipments (MUE) based on its traffic load use is also employed. Simulation analysis present improvements when these schemes are applied with emphasis in Long Term Evolution (LTE) networks especially in terms of Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR)

Alleviating Interference through Cognitive Radio for LTE-Advanced Network

In the LTE-Advanced network, some femtocells are deployed within a macroecell for improving throughput of indoor user equipments (UEs), which are referred to as femtocell UEs (FUEs). Cross-tier interference is an important issue in this deployment, which may significantly impact signal quality between Macrocell Base Stations (MBSs) and Macrocell User Equipments (MUEs), especially for MUEs near the femtocell. To relieve this problem, the Third Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution-Advanced (3GPP LTE-Advanced) de fined the cognitive radio enhanced femtocell to coordinate interference for LTE-Advanced Network. Cognitive radio femtocells have the ability to sense radio environment to obtain radio parameters. In this paper, we investigated the performance of existing schemes based on fractional frequency reuse. Therefore, we proposed a scheme with cognitive radio technology to improve the performance of fractional fre-quency reuse scheme. Simulation results showed that our scheme can effectively enhance average downlink throughput of FUEs as well as the total downlink throughput in LTE-Advanced Networks

Towards 5G Cellular: Understanding 3D In-Building Single Band and Multi-band Small Cells with Control/User-plane Coupled and Separation Architectures with a Novel Resource Reuse Approach

In this paper, we present numerous small cell base station, i.e. femtocell base station (FCBS), with control-/user-plane coupled and separation architectures based on the number of transceivers and operating frequency bands to serve control-/user-plane traffic. A single transceiver enabled FCBS can operate at either a co-channel microwave of the overlaid macrocell or a millimeter wave band. For multiple transceivers, dual transceivers are considered operating at both bands. FCBSs are deployed in a number of buildings with each floor modeled as 5×5 square-grid apartments. The co-channel interference with FCBSs is avoided using enhanced intercell interference coordination techniques. We propose a static frequency reuse approach and develop an algorithm by avoiding adjacent channel interferences from reusing frequencies in FCBSs. We also develop a resource scheduling algorithm for FCBSs with CUCA and CUSA to evaluate system level performances with a multi-tier network. It is found that a single transceiver co-channel microwave enabled FCBS with CUCA provides the worse, whereas a single or dual transceivers millimeter wave enabled FCBS with CUSA provides the best overall system capacity and FCBSs’ energy efficiency performances. Besides, we show the outperformances of the proposed resource reuse approach over an existing approach in literature in terms of system capacity and fairness among FCBSs with CUCA. Finally, we point out the applicability of a multi-band enabled FCBS and several features and issues of FCBSs with CUCA and CUSA.In this paper, we present numerous small cell base station, i.e. femtocell base station (FCBS), with control-/user-plane coupled and separation architectures based on the number of transceivers and operating frequency bands to serve control-/user-plane traffic. A single transceiver enabled FCBS can operate at either a co-channel microwave of the overlaid macrocell or a millimeter wave band. For multiple transceivers, dual transceivers are considered operating at both bands. FCBSs are deployed in a number of buildings with each floor modeled as 5 by 5 square-grid apartments. The co-channel interference with FCBSs is avoided using enhanced intercell interference coordination techniques. We propose a static frequency reuse approach and develop an algorithm by avoiding adjacent channel interferences from reusing frequencies in FCBSs. We also develop a resource scheduling algorithm for FCBSs with CUCA and CUSA to evaluate system level performances with a multi-tier network. It is found that a single transceiver co-channel microwave enabled FCBS with CUCA provides the worse, whereas a single or dual transceivers millimeter wave enabled FCBS with CUSA provides the best overall system capacity and FCBSs' energy efficiency performances. Besides, we show the outperformances of the proposed resource reuse approach over an existing approach in literature in terms of system capacity and fairness among FCBSs with CUCA. Finally, we point out the applicability of a multi-band enabled FCBS and several features and issues of FCBSs with CUCA and CUSA