Self-organising network management for heterogeneous LTE-advanced networks

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University LondonSince 2004, when the Long Term Evolution (LTE) was first proposed to be publicly available in the year 2009, a plethora of new characteristics, techniques and applications have been constantly enhancing it since its first release, over the past decade. As a result, the research aims for LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) have been released to create a ubiquitous and supportive network for mobile users. The incorporation of heterogeneous networks (HetNets) has been proposed as one of the main enhancements of LTE-A systems over the existing LTE releases, by proposing the deployment of small-cell applications, such as femtocells, to provide more coverage and quality of service (QoS) within the network, whilst also reducing capital expenditure. These principal advantages can be obtained at the cost of new challenges such as inter-cell interference, which occurs when different network applications share the same frequency channel in the network. In this thesis, the main challenges of HetNets in LTE-A platform have been addressed and novel solutions are proposed by using self-organising network (SON) management approaches, which allows the cooperative cellular systems to observe, decide and amend their ongoing operation based on network conditions. The novel SON algorithms are modelled and simulated in OPNET modeler simulation software for the three processes of resource allocation, mobility management and interference coordination in multi-tier macro-femto networks. Different channel allocation methods based on cooperative transmission, frequency reuse and dynamic spectrum access are investigated and a novel SON sub-channel allocation method is proposed based on hybrid fractional frequency reuse (HFFR) scheme to provide dynamic resource allocation between macrocells and femtocells, while avoiding co-tier and cross-tier interference. Mobility management is also addressed as another important issue in HetNets, especially in hand-ins from macrocell to femtocell base stations. The existing research considers a limited number of methods for handover optimisation, such as signal strength and call admission control (CAC) to avoid unnecessary handovers, while our novel SON handover management method implements a comprehensive algorithm that performs sensing process, as well as resource availability and user residence checks to initiate the handover process at the optimal time. In addition to this, the novel femto over macro priority (FoMP) check in this process also gives the femtocell target nodes priority over the congested macrocells in order to improve the QoS at both the network tiers. Inter-cell interference, as the key challenge of HetNets, is also investigated by research on the existing time-domain, frequency-domain and power control methods. A novel SON interference mitigation algorithm is proposed, which is based on enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) with power control process. The 3-phase power control algorithm contains signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) measurements, channel quality indicator (CQI) mapping and transmission power amendments to avoid the occurrence of interference due to the effects of high transmission power. The results of this research confirm that if heterogeneous systems are backed-up with SON management strategies, not only can improve the network capacity and QoS, but also the new network challenges such as inter-cell interference can also be mitigated in new releases of LTE-A network

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

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

Distributed radio resource management in LTE-advanced networks with type 1 relay

Long Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced is proposed as a candidate of the 4th generation (4G) mobile telecommunication systems. As an evolved version of LTE, LTE- Advanced is also based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and in addition, it adopts some emerging technologies, such as relaying. Type I relay nodes, de_ned in LTE-Advanced standards, can control their cells with their own reference signals and have Radio Resource Management (RRM) functionalities. The rationale of RRM is to decide which resources are allocated to which users for optimising performance metrics, such as throughput, fairness, power consumption and Quality of Service (QoS). The RRM techniques in LTE-Advanced networks, including route selection, resource partitioning and resource scheduling, are facing new challenges brought by Type 1 relay nodes and increasingly becoming research focuses in recent years. The research work presented in this thesis has made the following contributions. A service-aware adaptive bidirectional optimisation route selection strategy is proposed to consider both uplink optimisation and downlink optimisation according to service type. The load between di_erent serving nodes, including eNBs and relay nodes, are rebalanced under the _xed resource partitioning. The simulation results show that larger uplink throughputs and bidirectional throughputs can be achieved, compared with existing route selection strategies. A distributed two-hop proportional fair resource allocation scheme is proposed in order to provide better two-hop end-to-end proportional fairness for all the User Equipments (UEs), especially for the relay UEs. The resource partitioning is based on the cases of none Frequency Reuse (FR) pattern, full FR pattern and partial FR patterns. The resource scheduling in access links and backhaul links are considered jointly. A proportional fair joint route selection and resource partitioning algorithm isproposed to obtain an improved solution to the two-hop Adaptive Partial Frequency Reusing (APFR) problem with one relay node per cell. In addition, two special situations of APFR, full FR and no FR, are utilised to narrow the iterative search range of the proposed algorithm and reduce its complexity

Implementação e avaliação no system generator de um sistema cooperativo para os futuros sistemas 5G

With the arrival of 5G it is expected the proliferation of services in the different fields such as healthcare, utility applications, industrial automation, 4K streaming, that the former networks can not provide. Additionally, the total number of wireless communication devices will escalate in such a manner that the already scarce available frequency bandwidth won’t be enough to pack the intended objectives. Cisco’s Annual Internet Report from 2018 predicts that by 2023 there will be nearly 30 billion devices capable of wireless communication. Due to the exponential expiation of both services and devices, the challenges upon both network data capacity and efficient radio resourse use will be greater than ever, thus the urgency for solutions is grand. Both the capacity for wireless communications and spectral efficiency are related to cell size and its users proximity to the access point. Thus, shortening the distance between the transmitter and the receiver improves both aspects of the network. This concept is what motivates the implementation of heterogeneous networks, HetNets, that are composed of many different small-cells, SCs, overlaid across the same coexisting area of a conventional macro-cell, shortening the distance between the cell users and its access point transceivers, granting a better coverage and higher data rates. However, the HetNets potential does not come without any challenges, as these networks suffer considerably from communication interference between cells. Although some interference management algorithms that allow coexistence between cells have been proposed in recent years, most of them were evaluated by software simulations and not implemented in real-time platforms. Therefore, this master thesis aims to give the first step on the implementation and evaluation of an interference mitigation technique in hardware. Specifically, it is assumed a downlink scenario composed by a macro-cell base station, a macro-cell primary user and a small cell user, with the aim of implementing an algorithm that eliminates the downlink interference that the base station may cause to the secondary users. The study was carried out using the System Generator DSP tool, which is a tool that generates code for hardware from schematics created in it. This tool also offers a wide range of blocks that help the creation, and fundamentally, the simulation and study of the system to be implemented, before being translated into hardware. The results obtained in this work are a faithful representation of the behavior of the implemented system, which can be used for a future application for FPGA.Com a chegada do 5G, espera-se a proliferação de serviços nas mais diversas áreas tal como assistência médica, automação industrial, transmissão em 4k, que não eram possíveis nas redes das gerações anteriores. Além deste fenómeno, o número total de dispositivos capazes de conexões wireless aumentará de tal maneira que a escassa largura de banda disponível não será suficiente para abranger os objetivos pretendidos. O Relatório Anual de 2018 sobre a Internet da Cisco prevê que até 2023 haverá quase 30 bilhões de dispositivos capazes de comunicação sem fio. Devido ao aumento exponencial de serviços e dispositivos, os desafios sobre a capacidade de dados da rede e o udo eficiente dos recursos de rádio serão maiores que nunca. Por estes motivos, a necessidade de soluções para estas lacunas é enorme. Tanto a capacidade da rede e o uso eficiente do espectro de frequências estão relacionados ao tamanho da célula e à proximidade dos usuários com o ponto de acesso da célula. Ao encurtar a distância entre o transmissor e o recetor ocorre um melhoramento destes dois aspetos da rede. Este é o principal conceito na implementação de redes heterogéneas, HetNets, que são compostas por diversas células pequenas que coexistem na área de uma macro célula convencional, diminuído a distância entre os utilizadores da célula e os pontos de acesso, garantindo uma melhor cobertura e taxa de dados mais elevadas. No entanto, o potencial das HatNets não vem sem nenhum custo, pois estas redes sofrem consideravelmente de interferência entre as células. Embora nos últimos anos foram propostos alguns algoritmos que permitem a coexistência das células, a maioria destes foi só testado em simulações de software e não em plataformas em tempo real. Por esse motivo, esta dissertação de mestrado visa dar o primeiro passo na implementação e a avaliação de uma técnica de mitigação de interferência em hardware. Mais especificamente no cenário de downlink entre uma estação base de uma macro célula, um utilizador primário da macro célula e um utilizador secundário de uma célula pequena, com o principal objetivo de cancelar a interferência que a estação base possa fazer ao utilizador secundário. O estudo foi realizado utilizando a ferramenta System Generator DSP, que é uma ferramenta que gera código para hardware a partir de esquemáticos criados na mesma. Esta ferramenta também oferece uma vasta gama de blocos que ajudam a criação, e fundamentalmente, a simulação e o estudo do sistema a implementar antes de ser traduzido para hardware. Os resultados obtidos neste trabalho são uma fiel representação do comportamento do sistema implementado. O quais podem ser utilizados para uma futura aplicação para FPGA.Mestrado em Engenharia Eletrónica e Telecomunicaçõe

Uplink Resource Allocation in Relay Enhanced LTE-Advanced Cellular Networks

In parallel to HSPA evolution, 3GPP has adopted the Long Term Evolution track to fulfill the performance targets of 4G cellular networks. Multi-hop networks consisting of fixed decode and forward relays nodes are proposed to relax the capacity and coverage limitations encountered by traditional macro base station deployments. The relays are designed to operate on the in-band spectrum and support self-backhauling of user data. This thesis work provides an insight into the impact of uplink resource allocation in delivering improved user experience in relay enhanced cellular networks. Radio resource allocation and power control play a crucial role in the performance of wireless communication systems. System level simulations reveal that reuse 1 based relay enhanced cells operate in an interference limited scenario. Therefore, a resource allocation scheme based on user grouping is investigated to coordinate and mitigate the negative effect of interference. It is shown that the proposed methodology is spectrally efficient and delivers improved system performance. In addition to improving system performance, relaying is seen to be beneficial in significantly reducing battery consumption in devices. This is highly appealing since the next generation cellular networks are targeted towards higher bit rates and extended periods of mobile data usage. This work provides specific insights into the performance limiting criteria of the envisaged multi-hop system and, furthermore, is expected to contribute towards 3GPP's standardization of the relaying study item

LTE-verkon suorituskyvyn parantaminen CDMA2000:sta LTE:hen tehdyn muutoksen jälkeen

CDMA2000 technology has been widely used on 450 MHz band. Recently the equipment availability and improved performance offered by LTE has started driving the operators to migrate their networks from CDMA2000 to LTE. The migration may cause the network performance to be in suboptimal state. This thesis presents four methods to positively influence LTE network performance after CDMA2000 to LTE migration, especially on 450 MHz band. Furthermore, three of the four presented methods are evaluated in a live network. The measured three methods were cyclic prefix length, handover parameter optimization and uplink coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission. The objective was to determine the effectiveness of each method. The research methods included field measurements and network KPI collection. The results show that normal cyclic prefix length is enough for LTE450 although the cell radius may be up to 50km. Only special cases exist where cyclic prefix should be extended. Operators should consider solving such problems individually instead of widely implementing extended cyclic prefix. Handover parameter optimization turned out to be an important point of attention after CDMA2000 to LTE migration. It was observed that if the handover parameters are not concerned, significant amount of unnecessary handovers may happen. It was evaluated that about 50% of the handovers in the network were unnecessary in the initial situation. By adjusting the handover parameter values 47,28 % of the handovers per user were removed and no negative effects were detected. Coordinated multipoint transmission has been widely discussed to be an effective way to improve LTE network performance, especially at the cell edges. Many challenges must be overcome before it can be applied to downlink. Also, implementing it to function between cells in different eNBs involve challenges. Thus, only intra-site uplink CoMP transmission was tested. The results show that the performance improvements were significant at the cell edges as theory predicted.CDMA2000 teknologiaa on laajalti käytetty 450 MHz:n taajuusalueella. Viime aikoina LTE:n tarjoamat halvemmat laitteistot ja parempi suorituskyky ovat kannustaneet operaattoreita muuttamaan verkkoaan CDMA2000:sta LTE:hen. Kyseinen muutos saattaa johtaa epäoptimaaliseen tilaan verkon suorituskyvyn kannalta. Tämä työ esittelee neljä menetelmää, joilla voidaan positiivisesti vaikuttaa LTE-verkon suorituskykyyn CDMA2000:ste LTE:hen tehdyn muutoksen jälkeen erityisesti 450 MHz:n taajuusalueella. Kolmea näistä menetelmistä arvioidaan tuotantoverkossa. Nämä kolme menetelmää ovat suojavälin pituus, solunvaihtoparametrien optimointi ja ylälinkin koordinoitu monipistetiedonsiirto. Tavoite oli määrittää kunkin menetelmän vaikutus. Tutkimusmenetelmiin kuului kenttämittaukset ja verkon suorituskykymittareiden analyysi. Tutkimustulosten perusteella voidaan sanoa, että normaali suojaväli on riittävän pitkä LTE450:lle vaikka solujen säde on jopa 50km. Vain erikoistapauksissa tarvitaan pidennettyä suojaväliä. Operaattoreiden tulisi ratkaista tällaiset tapaukset yksilöllisesti sen sijaan, että koko verkossa käytettäisiin pidennettyä suojaväliä. Solunvaihtoparametrien optimointi osoittautui tärkeäksi huomion aiheeksi CDMA2000:sta LTE:hen tehdyn muutoksen jälkeen. Turhia solunvaihtoja saattaa tapahtua merkittäviä määriä, mikäli parametreihin ei kiinnitetä huomiota. Lähtötilanteessa noin 50 % testiverkon solunvaihdoista arvioitiin olevan turhia. Solunvaihtoparametreja muuttamalla 47,28 % solunvaihdoista per käyttäjä saatiin poistettua ilman, että mitään haittavaikutuksia olisi huomattu. Koordinoidun monipistetiedonsiirron on laajalti sanottu olevan tehokas tapa parantaa LTE-verkon suorituskykyä, etenkin solujen reunoilla. Monia haasteita pitää ratkaista, enne kuin sitä voidaan käyttää alalinkin tiedonsiirtoon. Lisäksi sen käyttöön eri tukiasemien solujen välillä liittyy haasteita. Tästä syystä monipistetiedonsiirtoa voitiin testata vain ylälinkin suuntaan ja vain yhden tukiaseman välisten solujen kesken. Tulokset osoittivat, että suorituskyky parani merkittävästi solun reunalla

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)