549 research outputs found
Open, Closed, and Shared Access Femtocells in the Downlink
A fundamental choice in femtocell deployments is the set of users which are
allowed to access each femtocell. Closed access restricts the set to
specifically registered users, while open access allows any mobile subscriber
to use any femtocell. Which one is preferable depends strongly on the distance
between the macrocell base station (MBS) and femtocell. The main results of the
paper are lemmas which provide expressions for the SINR distribution for
various zones within a cell as a function of this MBS-femto distance. The
average sum throughput (or any other SINR-based metric) of home users and
cellular users under open and closed access can be readily determined from
these expressions. We show that unlike in the uplink, the interests of home and
cellular users are in conflict, with home users preferring closed access and
cellular users preferring open access. The conflict is most pronounced for
femtocells near the cell edge, when there are many cellular users and fewer
femtocells. To mitigate this conflict, we propose a middle way which we term
shared access in which femtocells allocate an adjustable number of time-slots
between home and cellular users such that a specified minimum rate for each can
be achieved. The optimal such sharing fraction is derived. Analysis shows that
shared access achieves at least the overall throughput of open access while
also satisfying rate requirements, while closed access fails for cellular users
and open access fails for the home user.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless
Communication
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
Open vs Closed Access Femtocells in the Uplink
Femtocells are assuming an increasingly important role in the coverage and
capacity of cellular networks. In contrast to existing cellular systems,
femtocells are end-user deployed and controlled, randomly located, and rely on
third party backhaul (e.g. DSL or cable modem). Femtocells can be configured to
be either open access or closed access. Open access allows an arbitrary nearby
cellular user to use the femtocell, whereas closed access restricts the use of
the femtocell to users explicitly approved by the owner. Seemingly, the network
operator would prefer an open access deployment since this provides an
inexpensive way to expand their network capabilities, whereas the femtocell
owner would prefer closed access, in order to keep the femtocell's capacity and
backhaul to himself. We show mathematically and through simulations that the
reality is more complicated for both parties, and that the best approach
depends heavily on whether the multiple access scheme is orthogonal (TDMA or
OFDMA, per subband) or non-orthogonal (CDMA). In a TDMA/OFDMA network,
closed-access is typically preferable at high user densities, whereas in CDMA,
open access can provide gains of more than 200% for the home user by reducing
the near-far problem experienced by the femtocell. The results of this paper
suggest that the interests of the femtocell owner and the network operator are
more compatible than typically believed, and that CDMA femtocells should be
configured for open access whereas OFDMA or TDMA femtocells should adapt to the
cellular user density.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, submitted to IEEE Trans. on Wireless
Communication
Interference-Aware Downlink Resource Management for OFDMA Femtocell Networks
Femtocell is an economical solution to provide high speed indoor communication instead of the conventional macro-cellular networks. Especially, OFDMA femtocell is considered in the next generation cellular network such as 3GPP LTE and mobile WiMAX system. Although the femtocell has great advantages to accommodate indoor users, interference management problem is a critical issue to operate femtocell network. Existing OFDMA resource management algorithms only consider optimizing system-centric metric, and cannot manage the co-channel interference. Moreover, it is hard to cooperate with other femtocells to control the interference, since the self-configurable characteristics of femtocell. This paper proposes a novel interference-aware resource allocation algorithm for OFDMA femtocell networks. The proposed algorithm allocates resources according to a new objective function which reflects the effect of interference, and the heuristic algorithm is also introduced to reduce the complexity of the original problem. The Monte-Carlo simulation is performed to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm compared to the existing solutions
Outage Analysis of Uplink Two-tier Networks
Employing multi-tier networks is among the most promising approaches to
address the rapid growth of the data demand in cellular networks. In this
paper, we study a two-tier uplink cellular network consisting of femtocells and
a macrocell. Femto base stations, and femto and macro users are assumed to be
spatially deployed based on independent Poisson point processes. We consider an
open access assignment policy, where each macro user based on the ratio between
its distances from its nearest femto access point (FAP) and from the macro base
station (MBS) is assigned to either of them. By tuning the threshold, this
policy allows controlling the coverage areas of FAPs. For a fixed threshold,
femtocells coverage areas depend on their distances from the MBS; Those closest
to the fringes will have the largest coverage areas. Under this open-access
policy, ignoring the additive noise, we derive analytical upper and lower
bounds on the outage probabilities of femto users and macro users that are
subject to fading and path loss. We also study the effect of the distance from
the MBS on the outage probability experienced by the users of a femtocell. In
all cases, our simulation results comply with our analytical bounds
Performance analysis of resource scheduling in LTE femtocell with hybrid access mode
Femtocell is a promising technology that intends in solving the indoor coverage problems so as to enhance the cell capacity. The overall network performance, in turn depends on the access methods used by the femtocells. The access method is used to identify about the user’s connectivity with the femtocell network. There are three access mechanisms defined in Third Generation partnership Project (3GPP) specification for Long Term Evolution (LTE) femtocells: open, closed and hybrid access mechanisms. Hybrid access mechanism is mostly preferred by the network for the effective utilization of resources. But, it is important to regulate the proper scheduling scheme for them. In this paper, scheduling in femtocell is investigated, where, among the non subscribers, preference is given to the users who have high throughput priority metric, thereby increasing overall throughput of the network
Coalitional Games with Overlapping Coalitions for Interference Management in Small Cell Networks
In this paper, we study the problem of cooperative interference management in
an OFDMA two-tier small cell network. In particular, we propose a novel
approach for allowing the small cells to cooperate, so as to optimize their
sum-rate, while cooperatively satisfying their maximum transmit power
constraints. Unlike existing work which assumes that only disjoint groups of
cooperative small cells can emerge, we formulate the small cells' cooperation
problem as a coalition formation game with overlapping coalitions. In this
game, each small cell base station can choose to participate in one or more
cooperative groups (or coalitions) simultaneously, so as to optimize the
tradeoff between the benefits and costs associated with cooperation. We study
the properties of the proposed overlapping coalition formation game and we show
that it exhibits negative externalities due to interference. Then, we propose a
novel decentralized algorithm that allows the small cell base stations to
interact and self-organize into a stable overlapping coalitional structure.
Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm results in a notable
performance advantage in terms of the total system sum-rate, relative to the
noncooperative case and the classical algorithms for coalitional games with
non-overlapping coalitions
Enhanced Inter-Cell Interference Coordination Challenges in Heterogeneous Networks
3GPP LTE-Advanced has started a new study item to investigate Heterogeneous
Network (HetNet) deployments as a cost effective way to deal with the
unrelenting traffic demand. HetNets consist of a mix of macrocells, remote
radio heads, and low-power nodes such as picocells, femtocells, and relays.
Leveraging network topology, increasing the proximity between the access
network and the end-users, has the potential to provide the next significant
performance leap in wireless networks, improving spatial spectrum reuse and
enhancing indoor coverage. Nevertheless, deployment of a large number of small
cells overlaying the macrocells is not without new technical challenges. In
this article, we present the concept of heterogeneous networks and also
describe the major technical challenges associated with such network
architecture. We focus in particular on the standardization activities within
the 3GPP related to enhanced inter-cell interference coordination.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, 2 table
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