Self-optimization of pilot power in enterprise femtocells using multi objective heuristic

Deployment of a large number of femtocells to jointly provide coverage in an enterprise environment raises critical challenges especially in future self-organizing networks which rely on plug-and-play techniques for configuration. This paper proposes a multi-objective heuristic based on a genetic algorithm for a centralized self-optimizing network containing a group of UMTS femtocells. In order to optimize the network coverage in terms of handled load, coverage gaps, and overlaps, the algorithm provides a dynamic update of the downlink pilot powers of the deployed femtocells. The results demonstrate that the algorithm can effectively optimize the coverage based on the current statistics of the global traffic distribution and the levels of interference between neighboring femtocells. The algorithm was also compared with the fixed pilot power scheme. The results show over fifty percent reduction in pilot power pollution and a significant enhancement in network performance. Finally, for a given traffic distribution, the solution quality and the efficiency of the described algorithm were evaluated by comparing the results generated by an exhaustive search with the same pilot power configuration

Quantifying Potential Energy Efficiency Gain in Green Cellular Wireless Networks

Conventional cellular wireless networks were designed with the purpose of providing high throughput for the user and high capacity for the service provider, without any provisions of energy efficiency. As a result, these networks have an enormous Carbon footprint. In this paper, we describe the sources of the inefficiencies in such networks. First we present results of the studies on how much Carbon footprint such networks generate. We also discuss how much more mobile traffic is expected to increase so that this Carbon footprint will even increase tremendously more. We then discuss specific sources of inefficiency and potential sources of improvement at the physical layer as well as at higher layers of the communication protocol hierarchy. In particular, considering that most of the energy inefficiency in cellular wireless networks is at the base stations, we discuss multi-tier networks and point to the potential of exploiting mobility patterns in order to use base station energy judiciously. We then investigate potential methods to reduce this inefficiency and quantify their individual contributions. By a consideration of the combination of all potential gains, we conclude that an improvement in energy consumption in cellular wireless networks by two orders of magnitude, or even more, is possible.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1210.843

Multi-channel Hybrid Access Femtocells: A Stochastic Geometric Analysis

For two-tier networks consisting of macrocells and femtocells, the channel access mechanism can be configured to be open access, closed access, or hybrid access. Hybrid access arises as a compromise between open and closed access mechanisms, in which a fraction of available spectrum resource is shared to nonsubscribers while the remaining reserved for subscribers. This paper focuses on a hybrid access mechanism for multi-channel femtocells which employ orthogonal spectrum access schemes. Considering a randomized channel assignment strategy, we analyze the performance in the downlink. Using stochastic geometry as technical tools, we model the distribution of femtocells as Poisson point process or Neyman-Scott cluster process and derive the distributions of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios, and mean achievable rates, of both nonsubscribers and subscribers. The established expressions are amenable to numerical evaluation, and shed key insights into the performance tradeoff between subscribers and nonsubscribers. The analytical results are corroborated by numerical simulations.Comment: This is the final version, which was accepted in IEEE Transactions on Communication

Project Final Report – FREEDOM ICT-248891

This document is the final publishable summary report of the objective and work carried out within the European Project FREEDOM, ICT-248891.This document is the final publishable summary report of the objective and work carried out within the European Project FREEDOM, ICT-248891.Preprin

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)