Interference Management Based on RT/nRT Traffic Classification for FFR-Aided Small Cell/Macrocell Heterogeneous Networks

Cellular networks are constantly lagging in terms of the bandwidth needed to support the growing high data rate demands. The system needs to efficiently allocate its frequency spectrum such that the spectrum utilization can be maximized while ensuring the quality of service (QoS) level. Owing to the coexistence of different types of traffic (e.g., real-time (RT) and non-real-time (nRT)) and different types of networks (e.g., small cell and macrocell), ensuring the QoS level for different types of users becomes a challenging issue in wireless networks. Fractional frequency reuse (FFR) is an effective approach for increasing spectrum utilization and reducing interference effects in orthogonal frequency division multiple access networks. In this paper, we propose a new FFR scheme in which bandwidth allocation is based on RT/nRT traffic classification. We consider the coexistence of small cells and macrocells. After applying FFR technique in macrocells, the remaining frequency bands are efficiently allocated among the small cells overlaid by a macrocell. In our proposed scheme, total frequency-band allocations for different macrocells are decided on the basis of the traffic intensity. The transmitted power levels for different frequency bands are controlled based on the level of interference from a nearby frequency band. Frequency bands with a lower level of interference are assigned to the RT traffic to ensure a higher QoS level for the RT traffic. RT traffic calls in macrocell networks are also given a higher priority compared with nRT traffic calls to ensure the low call-blocking rate. Performance analyses show significant improvement under the proposed scheme compared with conventional FFR schemes

Throughput Analysis and Optimization of Multi-layer FFR-aided OFDMA Networks

[EN] In OFDMA networks, the use of universal frequency reuse plans improves cell capacity but causes very high levels of inter-cell interference (ICI), particularly affecting users located in the cell-edge regions.In order to mitigate ICI while achieving high spectral efficiencies, fractional frequency reuse (FFR) shows a good tradeoff between cell-edge throughput and overall cell spectral efficiency.Recently, multi-layer FFR-aided OFDMA-based designs, splitting the cell into inner, middle and outer layers have been proposed and studied with the aim of increasing the spectrum utilization and improving the user fairness throughout the cell.This paper presents an analytical framework allowing the performance evaluation and optimization of multi-layer FFR designs in OFDMA-based networks.Tractable mathematical expressions of the average cell throughput as well as the layer spectral efficiency have been derived for both proportional fair (PF) and round robin (RR) scheduling policies.Work supported by the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (AEI/FEDER, UE) under project ELISA (subproject TEC2014-59255-C3-2-R), Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO), Spain, and the Conselleria d’Educacio, Cultura i Universitats (Govern de les Illes Balears) under grant FPI/1538/2013 (co-financed by the European Social Fund). The research leading to these results has also received funding from ”la Caixa” Banking Foundation.Garcia-Morales, J.; Femenias, G.; Riera-Palou, F.; Thompson, JS. (2018). Throughput Analysis and Optimization of Multi-layer FFR-aided OFDMA Networks. En XIII Jornadas de Ingeniería telemática (JITEL 2017). Libro de actas. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 140-147. https://doi.org/10.4995/JITEL2017.2017.6582OCS14014

Hungarian Mechanism based Sectored FFR for Irregular Geometry Multicellular Networks

The growing demands for mobile broadband application services along with the scarcity of the spectrum have triggered the dense utilization of frequency resources in cellular networks. The capacity demands are coped accordingly, however at the detriment of added inter-cell interference (ICI). Fractional Frequency Reuse (FFR) is an effective ICI mitigation approach when adopted in realistic irregular geometry cellular networks. However, in the literature optimized spectrum resources for the individual users are not considered. In this paper Hungarian Mechanism based Sectored Fractional Frequency Reuse (HMS-FFR) scheme is proposed, where the sub-carriers present in the dynamically partitioned spectrum are optimally allocated to each user. Simulation results revealed that the proposed HMS-FFR scheme enhances the system performance in terms of achievable throughput, average sum rate, and achievable throughput with respect to load while considering full traffic

Eficiência energética avançada para sistema OFDMA CoMP coordenação multiponto

Doutoramento em Engenharia EletrotécnicaThe ever-growing energy consumption in mobile networks stimulated by the expected growth in data tra ffic has provided the impetus for mobile operators to refocus network design, planning and deployment towards reducing the cost per bit, whilst at the same time providing a signifi cant step towards reducing their operational expenditure. As a step towards incorporating cost-eff ective mobile system, 3GPP LTE-Advanced has adopted the coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission technique due to its ability to mitigate and manage inter-cell interference (ICI). Using CoMP the cell average and cell edge throughput are boosted. However, there is room for reducing energy consumption further by exploiting the inherent exibility of dynamic resource allocation protocols. To this end packet scheduler plays the central role in determining the overall performance of the 3GPP longterm evolution (LTE) based on packet-switching operation and provide a potential research playground for optimizing energy consumption in future networks. In this thesis we investigate the baseline performance for down link CoMP using traditional scheduling approaches, and subsequently go beyond and propose novel energy e fficient scheduling (EES) strategies that can achieve power-e fficient transmission to the UEs whilst enabling both system energy effi ciency gain and fairness improvement. However, ICI can still be prominent when multiple nodes use common resources with di fferent power levels inside the cell, as in the so called heterogeneous networks (Het- Net) environment. HetNets are comprised of two or more tiers of cells. The rst, or higher tier, is a traditional deployment of cell sites, often referred to in this context as macrocells. The lower tiers are termed small cells, and can appear as microcell, picocells or femtocells. The HetNet has attracted signiffi cant interest by key manufacturers as one of the enablers for high speed data at low cost. Research until now has revealed several key hurdles that must be overcome before HetNets can achieve their full potential: bottlenecks in the backhaul must be alleviated, as well as their seamless interworking with CoMP. In this thesis we explore exactly the latter hurdle, and present innovative ideas on advancing CoMP to work in synergy with HetNet deployment, complemented by a novel resource allocation policy for HetNet tighter interference management. As system level simulator has been used to analyze the proposed algorithm/protocols, and results have concluded that up to 20% energy gain can be observed.O aumento do consumo de energia nas TICs e em particular nas redes de comunicação móveis, estimulado por um crescimento esperado do tráfego de dados, tem servido de impulso aos operadores m oveis para reorientarem os seus projectos de rede, planeamento e implementa ção no sentido de reduzir o custo por bit, o que ao mesmo tempo possibilita um passo signicativo no sentido de reduzir as despesas operacionais. Como um passo no sentido de uma incorporação eficaz em termos destes custos, o sistema móvel 3GPP LTE-Advanced adoptou a técnica de transmissão Coordenação Multi-Ponto (identificada na literatura com a sigla CoMP) devido à sua capacidade de mitigar e gerir Interferência entre Células (sigla ICI na literatura). No entanto a ICI pode ainda ser mais proeminente quando v arios n os no interior da célula utilizam recursos comuns com diferentes níveis de energia, como acontece nos chamados ambientes de redes heterogéneas (sigla Het- Net na literatura). As HetNets são constituídas por duas ou mais camadas de células. A primeira, ou camada superiora, constitui uma implantação tradicional de sítios de célula, muitas vezes referidas neste contexto como macrocells. Os níveis mais baixos são designados por células pequenas, e podem aparecer como microcells, picocells ou femtocells. A HetNet tem atra do grande interesse por parte dos principais fabricantes como sendo facilitador para transmissões de dados de alta velocidade a baixo custo. A investigação tem revelado at e a data, vários dos principais obstáculos que devem ser superados para que as HetNets possam atingir todo o seu potencial: (i) os estrangulamentos no backhaul devem ser aliviados; (ii) bem como sua perfeita interoperabilidade com CoMP. Nesta tese exploramos este ultimo constrangimento e apresentamos ideias inovadoras em como a t ecnica CoMP poder a ser aperfeiçoada por forma a trabalhar em sinergia com a implementação da HetNet, complementado ainda com uma nova perspectiva na alocação de recursos rádio para um controlo e gestão mais apertado de interferência nas HetNets. Com recurso a simulação a níível de sistema para analisar o desempenho dos algoritmos e protocolos propostos, os resultados obtidos concluíram que ganhos at e a ordem dos 20% poderão ser atingidos em termos de eficiência energética

Algoritmos de aprendizado de máquina para coordenação de interferência entre células

The current LTE and LTE-A deployments require larger efforts to achieve the radio resource management. This, due to the increase of users and the constantly growing demand of services. For this reason, the automatic optimization is a key point to avoid issues such as the inter-cell interference. This paper presents several proposals of machine-learning algorithms focused on this automatic optimization problem. The research works seek that the cellular systems achieve their self-optimization, a key concept within the self-organized networks, where the main objective is to achieve that the networks to be capable to automatically respond to the particular needs in the dynamic network traffic scenarios.Los despliegues actuales de LTE y LTE-A requieren mayor esfuerzo para la gestión de recursos radio debido al incremento de usuarios y a la gran demanda de servicios; en ese escenario, la optimización automática es un punto clave para evitar problemas como la interferencia inter-celda. El presente trabajo recopila propuestas de algoritmos de aprendizaje automático [machine learning] enfocados en resolver este problema. Las investigaciones buscan que los sistemas celulares consigan su auto-optimización, un concepto que se enmarca dentro del área de redes auto-organizadas [Self-Organized Networks, SON], cuyo objetivo es lograr que las redes respondan de forma automática a las necesidades de los escenarios dinámicos de tráfico de red.As implantações atuais de LTE e LTE-A exigem maior esforço para o gerenciamento de recursos rádio devido ao aumento de usuários e à alta demanda por serviços, neste cenário a otimização automática é um ponto-chave para evitar problemas como a interferência entre células. O presente trabalho coleta propostas de algoritmos de aprendizado automáticos focados na resolução deste problema. A pesquisa busca que os sistemas celulares alcancem a sua auto-otimização, um conceito que faz parte das redes auto-organizadas (Self-Organizing Networks, SON), cujo objetivo é garantir que as redes respondam automaticamente às necessidades dos cenários dinâmicos do tráfego de rede

Energy efficiency and interference management in long term evolution-advanced networks.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.Cellular networks are continuously undergoing fast extraordinary evolution to overcome technological challenges. The fourth generation (4G) or Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-Advanced) networks offer improvements in performance through increase in network density, while allowing self-organisation and self-healing. The LTE-Advanced architecture is heterogeneous, consisting of different radio access technologies (RATs), such as macrocell, smallcells, cooperative relay nodes (RNs), having various capabilities, and coexisting in the same geographical coverage area. These network improvements come with different challenges that affect users’ quality of service (QoS) and network performance. These challenges include; interference management, high energy consumption and poor coverage of marginal users. Hence, developing mitigation schemes for these identified challenges is the focus of this thesis. The exponential growth of mobile broadband data usage and poor networks’ performance along the cell edges, result in a large increase of the energy consumption for both base stations (BSs) and users. This due to improper RN placement or deployment that creates severe inter-cell and intracell interferences in the networks. It is therefore, necessary to investigate appropriate RN placement techniques which offer efficient coverage extension while reducing energy consumption and mitigating interference in LTE-Advanced femtocell networks. This work proposes energy efficient and optimal RN placement (EEORNP) algorithm based on greedy algorithm to assure improved and effective coverage extension. The performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated in terms of coverage percentage and number of RN needed to cover marginalised users and found to outperform other RN placement schemes. Transceiver design has gained importance as one of the effective tools of interference management. Centralised transceiver design techniques have been used to improve network performance for LTE-Advanced networks in terms of mean square error (MSE), bit error rate (BER) and sum-rate. The centralised transceiver design techniques are not effective and computationally feasible for distributed cooperative heterogeneous networks, the systems considered in this thesis. This work proposes decentralised transceivers design based on the least-square (LS) and minimum MSE (MMSE) pilot-aided channel estimations for interference management in uplink LTE-Advanced femtocell networks. The decentralised transceiver algorithms are designed for the femtocells, the macrocell user equipments (MUEs), RNs and the cell edge macrocell UEs (CUEs) in the half-duplex cooperative relaying systems. The BER performances of the proposed algorithms with the effect of channel estimation are investigated. Finally, the EE optimisation is investigated in half-duplex multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) relay systems. The EE optimisation is divided into sub-optimal EE problems due to the distributed architecture of the MU-MIMO relay systems. The decentralised approach is employed to design the transceivers such as MUEs, CUEs, RN and femtocells for the different sub-optimal EE problems. The EE objective functions are formulated as convex optimisation problems subject to the QoS and transmit powers constraints in case of perfect channel state information (CSI). The non-convexity of the formulated EE optimisation problems is surmounted by introducing the EE parameter substractive function into each proposed algorithms. These EE parameters are updated using the Dinkelbach’s algorithm. The EE optimisation of the proposed algorithms is achieved after finding the optimal transceivers where the unknown interference terms in the transmit signals are designed with the zero-forcing (ZF) assumption and estimation errors are added to improve the EE performances. With the aid of simulation results, the performance of the proposed decentralised schemes are derived in terms of average EE evaluation and found to be better than existing algorithms