Mobility Analysis and Management for Heterogeneous Networks

The global mobile data traffic has increased tremendously in the last decade due to the technological advancement in smartphones. Their endless usage and bandwidth-intensive applications will saturate current 4G technologies and has motivated the need for concrete research in order to sustain the mounting data traffic demand. In this regard, the network densification has shown to be a promising direction to cope with the capacity demands in future 5G wireless networks. The basic idea is to deploy several low power radio access nodes called small cells closer to the users on the existing large radio foot print of macrocells, and this constitutes a heterogeneous network (HetNet). However, there are many challenges that operators face with the dense HetNet deployment. The mobility management becomes a challenging task due to triggering of frequent handovers when a user moves across the network coverage areas. When there are fewer users associated in certain small cells, this can lead to significant increase in the energy consumption. Intelligently switching them to low energy consumption modes or turning them off without seriously degrading user performance is desirable in order to improve the energy savings in HetNets. This dynamic power level switching in the small cells, however, may cause unnecessary handovers, and it becomes important to ensure energy savings without compromising handover performance. Finally, it is important to evaluate mobility management schemes in real network deployments, in order to find any problems affecting the quality of service (QoS) of the users. The research presented in this dissertation aims to address these challenges. First, to tackle the mobility management issue, we develop a closed form, analytical model to study the handover and ping-pong performance as a function of network parameters in the small cells, and verify its performance using simulations. Secondly, we incorporate fuzzy logic based game-theoretic framework to address and examine the energy efficiency improvements in HetNets. In addition, we design fuzzy inference rules for handover decisions and target base station selection is performed through a fuzzy ranking technique in order to enhance the mobility robustness, while also considering energy/spectral efficiency. Finally, we evaluate the mobility performance by carrying out drive test in an existing 4G long term evolution (LTE) network deployment using software defined radios (SDR). This helps to obtain network quality information in order to find any problems affecting the QoS of the users

Power Saving Techniques in 5G Technology for Multiple-Beam Communications

The evolution of mobile technology and computation systems enables User Equipment (UE) to manage tremendous amounts of data transmission. As a result of current 5G technology, several types of wireless traffic in millimeter wave bands can be transmitted at high data rates with ultra-reliable and small latency communications. The 5G networks rely on directional beamforming and mmWave uses to overcome propagation and losses during penetration. To align the best beam pairs and achieve high data rates, beam-search operations are used in 5G. This combined with multibeam reception and high-order modulation techniques deteriorates the battery power of the UE. In the previous 4G radio mobile system, Discontinuous Reception (DRX) techniques were successfully used to save energy. To reduce the energy consumption and latency of multiple-beam 5G radio communications, we will propose in this paper the DRX Beam Measurement technique (DRX-BM). Based on the power-saving factor analysis and the delayed response, we will model DRX-BM into a semi-Markov process to reduce the tracking time. Simulations in MATLAB are used to assess the effectiveness of the proposed model and avoid unnecessary time spent on beam search. Furthermore, the simulation indicates that our proposed technique makes an improvement and saves 14% on energy with a minimum delay

Korkean luotettavuuden verkkohallinteiset laitteiden väliset yhteydet

Fifth generation cellular networks aim to provide new types of services. Prominent amongst these are industrial automation and vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Such new use cases demand lower latencies and higher reliability along with greater flexibility than current and past generations of cellular technologies allow. Enabling these new service types requires the introduction of device-to-device communications (D2D). This work investigated network-controlled D2D schemes wherein cellular base stations retain control over spectrum usage. D2D nodes assemble into clusters. Each D2D cluster then organises itself as it sees fit within the constraints imposed by the cellular network. A review of proposed D2D control schemes was conducted to identify pertinent interference issues. Measurements were then devised to empirically collect quantitative data on the impact of this interference. Measurements were conducted using a software-defined radio (SDR) platform. An SDR based system was selected to enable a low cost and highly flexible iterative approach to development while still providing the accuracy of real-world measurement. D2D functionality was added to the chosen SDR system with the essential parts of Long Term Evolution Release 8 implemented. Two series of measurements were performed. The first aimed to determine the adjacent channel interference impact of a cellular user being located near a D2D receiver. The second measurement series collected data on the co-channel interference of spectrum re-use between a D2D link and a moving cellular transmitter. Based on these measurements it was determined that D2D communications within a cellular system is feasible. Furthermore, the required frequency of channel state information reporting as a function of node velocity was determined.Viidennen sukupolven solukkoverkoilla pyritään mahdollistamaan uudentyyppisiä palveluja kuten teollisuusautomatiikkaa ja ajoneuvojen välistä viestintää. Tämänkaltaiset uudet käyttötarkoitukset vaativat lyhyempien viiveiden ja korkeammat luotettavuuden ohella myös suurempaa joustavuutta kuin minkä nykyisen sukupolven matkapuhelinverkkoteknologiat sallivat. Edellä mainittujen uusien palvelujen toteuttaminen vaatii suoria laitteiden välisiä yhteyksiä (engl. D2D). Tässä diplomityössä keskityttiin tutkimaan verkkohallinteisia D2D-rakenteita, joissa solukkoverkko hallinnoi spektrin käyttöä. D2D-päätteet liittyvät yhteen muodostaakseen klustereita, jotka hallinnoivat sisäistä tietoliikennettään parhaaksi katsomallaan tavalla solukkoverkon asettamien rajoitusten puitteissa. Kirjallisuuskatsauksen avulla selvitettiin aiemmissa tutkimuksissa esitetyille D2D-ratkaisuille yhteiset interferenssiongelmat. Näiden vaikutusta ja suuruutta tutkittiin mittausten avulla. Mittaukset toteutettiin ohjelmistoradioalustan (engl. SDR) avulla. SDR-pohjaisen järjestelmän käyttö mahdollisti edullisen ja joustavan tavan kerätä empiirisiä mittaustuloksia. D2D-toiminnallisuus lisättiin Long Term Evolution Release 8:n olennaiset ominaisuudet omaavaan alustaan. Tällä alustalla toteutettiin kaksi mittaussarjaa. Ensimmäisellä kerättiin tuloksia viereisellä kanavalla toimivan matkapuhelimen D2D-vastaanottimelle aiheuttamasta interferenssistä näiden ollessa toistensa läheisyydessä. Toisella mittaussarjalla selvitettiin samalla kanavalla toimivan D2D-yhteyden ja liikkuvan matkapuhelimen välistä interferenssiä. Mittausten perusteella todettiin D2D-toiminnallisuuden lisäämisen solukkoverkkoon olevan mahdollista. Lisäksi laskettiin vaadittava kanavalaadun päivitystiheys päätteiden nopeuden funktiona