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

Ubiquitous Cell-Free Massive MIMO Communications

Since the first cellular networks were trialled in the 1970s, we have witnessed an incredible wireless revolution. From 1G to 4G, the massive traffic growth has been managed by a combination of wider bandwidths, refined radio interfaces, and network densification, namely increasing the number of antennas per site. Due its cost-efficiency, the latter has contributed the most. Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) is a key 5G technology that uses massive antenna arrays to provide a very high beamforming gain and spatially multiplexing of users, and hence, increases the spectral and energy efficiency. It constitutes a centralized solution to densify a network, and its performance is limited by the inter-cell interference inherent in its cell-centric design. Conversely, ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO refers to a distributed Massive MIMO system implementing coherent user-centric transmission to overcome the inter-cell interference limitation in cellular networks and provide additional macro-diversity. These features, combined with the system scalability inherent in the Massive MIMO design, distinguishes ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO from prior coordinated distributed wireless systems. In this article, we investigate the enormous potential of this promising technology while addressing practical deployment issues to deal with the increased back/front-hauling overhead deriving from the signal co-processing.Comment: Published in EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking on August 5, 201

Performance Modelling and Analysis of a New CoMP-based Handover Scheme for Next Generation Wireless Networks. Performance Modelling and Analysis for the Design and Development of a New Handover Scheme for Cell Edge Users in Next Generation Wireless Networks (NGWNs) Based on the Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) Joint Transmission (JT) Technique

Inter-Cell Interference (ICI) will be one of main problems for degrading the performance of future wireless networks at cell edge. This adverse situation will become worst in the presence of dense deployment of micro and macro cells. In this context, the Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) technique was introduced to mitigate ICI in Next Generation Wireless Networks (NGWN) and increase their network performance at cell edge. Even though the CoMP technique provides satisfactory solutions of various problems at cell edge, nevertheless existing CoMP handover schemes do not prevent unnecessary handover initialisation decisions and never discuss the drawbacks of CoMP handover technique such as excessive feedback and resource sharing among UEs. In this research, new CoMP-based handover schemes are proposed in order to minimise unnecessary handover decisions at cell edge and determine solution of drawbacks of CoMP technique in conjunction with signal measurements such as Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) and Received Signal Received Quality (RSRQ). A combination of calculations of RSRP and RSRQ facilitate a credible decision making process of CoMP mode and handover mode at cell edge. Typical numerical experiments indicate that by triggering the CoMP mode along with solutions of drawbacks, the overall network performance is constantly increase as the number of unnecessary handovers is progressively reduced

Autonomous Algorithms for Centralized and Distributed Interference Coordination: A Virtual Layer Based Approach

Interference mitigation techniques are essential for improving the performance of interference limited wireless networks. In this paper, we introduce novel interference mitigation schemes for wireless cellular networks with space division multiple access (SDMA). The schemes are based on a virtual layer that captures and simplifies the complicated interference situation in the network and that is used for power control. We show how optimization in this virtual layer generates gradually adapting power control settings that lead to autonomous interference minimization. Thereby, the granularity of control ranges from controlling frequency sub-band power via controlling the power on a per-beam basis, to a granularity of only enforcing average power constraints per beam. In conjunction with suitable short-term scheduling, our algorithms gradually steer the network towards a higher utility. We use extensive system-level simulations to compare three distributed algorithms and evaluate their applicability for different user mobility assumptions. In particular, it turns out that larger gains can be achieved by imposing average power constraints and allowing opportunistic scheduling instantaneously, rather than controlling the power in a strict way. Furthermore, we introduce a centralized algorithm, which directly solves the underlying optimization and shows fast convergence, as a performance benchmark for the distributed solutions. Moreover, we investigate the deviation from global optimality by comparing to a branch-and-bound-based solution.Comment: revised versio

Generalized Coordinated Multipoint Framework for 5G and Beyond

The characteristic feature of 5G is the diversity of its services for different user needs. However, the requirements for these services are competing in nature, which impresses the necessity of a coordinated and flexible network architecture. Although coordinated multipoint (CoMP) systems were primarily proposed to improve the cell edge performance in 4G, their collaborative nature can be leveraged to support the diverse requirements and enabling technologies of 5G and beyond networks. To this end, we propose generalization of CoMP to a proactive and efficient resource utilization framework capable of supporting different user requirements such as reliability, latency, throughput, and security while considering network constraints. This article elaborates on the multiple aspects, inputs, and outputs of the generalized CoMP (GCoMP) framework. Apart from user requirements, the GCoMP decision mechanism also considers the CoMP scenario and network architecture to decide upon outputs such as CoMP technique or appropriate coordinating clusters. To enable easier understanding of the concept, popular use cases, such as vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication and eHealth, are studied. Additionally, interesting challenges and open areas in GCoMP are discussed.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

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