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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
Resource Allocation for Network-Integrated Device-to-Device Communications Using Smart Relays
With increasing number of autonomous heterogeneous devices in future mobile
networks, an efficient resource allocation scheme is required to maximize
network throughput and achieve higher spectral efficiency. In this paper,
performance of network-integrated device-to-device (D2D) communication is
investigated where D2D traffic is carried through relay nodes. An optimization
problem is formulated for allocating radio resources to maximize end-to-end
rate as well as conversing QoS requirements for cellular and D2D user equipment
under total power constraint. Numerical results show that there is a distance
threshold beyond which relay-assisted D2D communication significantly improves
network performance when compared to direct communication between D2D peers
Separation Framework: An Enabler for Cooperative and D2D Communication for Future 5G Networks
Soaring capacity and coverage demands dictate that future cellular networks
need to soon migrate towards ultra-dense networks. However, network
densification comes with a host of challenges that include compromised energy
efficiency, complex interference management, cumbersome mobility management,
burdensome signaling overheads and higher backhaul costs. Interestingly, most
of the problems, that beleaguer network densification, stem from legacy
networks' one common feature i.e., tight coupling between the control and data
planes regardless of their degree of heterogeneity and cell density.
Consequently, in wake of 5G, control and data planes separation architecture
(SARC) has recently been conceived as a promising paradigm that has potential
to address most of aforementioned challenges. In this article, we review
various proposals that have been presented in literature so far to enable SARC.
More specifically, we analyze how and to what degree various SARC proposals
address the four main challenges in network densification namely: energy
efficiency, system level capacity maximization, interference management and
mobility management. We then focus on two salient features of future cellular
networks that have not yet been adapted in legacy networks at wide scale and
thus remain a hallmark of 5G, i.e., coordinated multipoint (CoMP), and
device-to-device (D2D) communications. After providing necessary background on
CoMP and D2D, we analyze how SARC can particularly act as a major enabler for
CoMP and D2D in context of 5G. This article thus serves as both a tutorial as
well as an up to date survey on SARC, CoMP and D2D. Most importantly, the
article provides an extensive outlook of challenges and opportunities that lie
at the crossroads of these three mutually entangled emerging technologies.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 201
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
Evolution Toward 5G Mobile Networks - A Survey on Enabling Technologies
In this paper, an extensive review has been carried out on the trends of existing as well as proposed potential enabling technologies that are expected to shape the fifth generation (5G) mobile wireless networks. Based on the classification of the trends, we develop a 5G network architectural evolution framework that comprises three evolutionary directions, namely, (1) radio access network node and performance enabler, (2) network control programming platform, and (3) backhaul network platform and synchronization. In (1), we discuss node classification including low power nodes in emerging machine-type communications, and network capacity enablers, e.g., millimeter wave communications and massive multiple-input multiple-output. In (2), both logically distributed cell/device-centric platforms, and logically centralized conventional/wireless software defined networking control programming approaches are discussed. In (3), backhaul networks and network synchronization are discussed. A comparative analysis for each direction as well as future evolutionary directions and challenges toward 5G networks are discussed. This survey will be helpful for further research exploitations and network operators for a smooth evolution of their existing networks toward 5G networks
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
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