Multi-tier Drone Architecture for 5G/B5G Cellular Networks: Challenges, Trends, and Prospects

Drones (or unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs]) are expected to be an important component of fifth generation (5G)/beyond 5G (B5G) cellular architectures that can potentially facilitate wireless broadcast or point-to-multipoint transmissions. The distinct features of various drones such as the maximum operational altitude, communication, coverage, computation, and endurance impel the use of a multi-tier architecture for future drone-cell networks. In this context, this article focuses on investigating the feasibility of multi-tier drone network architecture over traditional single-tier drone networks and identifying the scenarios in which drone networks can potentially complement the traditional RF-based terrestrial networks. We first identify the challenges associated with multi-tier drone networks as well as drone-assisted cellular networks. We then review the existing state-of-the-art innovations in drone networks and drone-assisted cellular networks. We then investigate the performance of a multi-tier drone network in terms of spectral efficiency of downlink transmission while illustrating the optimal intensity and altitude of drones in different tiers numerically. Our results demonstrate the specific network load conditions (i.e., ratio of user intensity and base station intensity) where deployment of drones can be beneficial (in terms of spectral efficiency of downlink transmission) for conventional terrestrial cellular networks

On User Association in Multi-Tier Full-Duplex Cellular Networks

We address the user association problem in multi-tier in-band full-duplex (FD) networks. Specifically, we consider the case of decoupled user association (DUA) in which users (UEs) are not necessarily served by the same base station (BS) for uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) transmissions. Instead, UEs can simultaneously associate to different BSs based on two independent weighted path-loss user association criteria for UL and DL. We use stochastic geometry to develop a comprehensive modeling framework for the proposed system model where BSs and UEs are spatially distributed according to independent point processes. We derive closed-form expressions for the mean rate utility in FD, half-duplex (HD) DL, and HD UL networks as well as the mean rate utility of legacy nodes with only HD capabilities in a multi-tier FD network. We formulate and solve an optimization problem that aims at maximizing the mean rate utility of the FD network by optimizing the DL and UL user association criteria. We investigate the effects of different network parameters including the spatial density of BSs and power control parameter. We also investigate the effect of imperfect self-interference cancellation (SIC) and show that it is more severe at UL, where there exist minimum required SIC capabilities for BSs and UEs for which FD networks are preferable to HD networks; otherwise, HD networks are preferable. In addition, we discuss several special cases and provide guidelines on the possible extensions of the proposed framework. We conclude that DUA outperforms coupled user association (CUA) in which UEs associate to the same BS for both UL and DL transmissions

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

Modeling, Analysis and Design for Carrier Aggregation in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Carrier aggregation (CA) and small cells are two distinct features of next-generation cellular networks. Cellular networks with small cells take on a very heterogeneous characteristic, and are often referred to as HetNets. In this paper, we introduce a load-aware model for CA-enabled \textit{multi}-band HetNets. Under this model, the impact of biasing can be more appropriately characterized; for example, it is observed that with large enough biasing, the spectral efficiency of small cells may increase while its counterpart in a fully-loaded model always decreases. Further, our analysis reveals that the peak data rate does not depend on the base station density and transmit powers; this strongly motivates other approaches e.g. CA to increase the peak data rate. Last but not least, different band deployment configurations are studied and compared. We find that with large enough small cell density, spatial reuse with small cells outperforms adding more spectrum for increasing user rate. More generally, universal cochannel deployment typically yields the largest rate; and thus a capacity loss exists in orthogonal deployment. This performance gap can be reduced by appropriately tuning the HetNet coverage distribution (e.g. by optimizing biasing factors).Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communications, Nov. 201

Downlink Coordinated Multi-Point with Overhead Modeling in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) communication is attractive for heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs) for interference reduction. However, previous approaches to CoMP face two major hurdles in HCNs. First, they usually ignore the inter-cell overhead messaging delay, although it results in an irreducible performance bound. Second, they consider the grid or Wyner model for base station locations, which is not appropriate for HCN BS locations which are numerous and haphazard. Even for conventional macrocell networks without overlaid small cells, SINR results are not tractable in the grid model nor accurate in the Wyner model. To overcome these hurdles, we develop a novel analytical framework which includes the impact of overhead delay for CoMP evaluation in HCNs. This framework can be used for a class of CoMP schemes without user data sharing. As an example, we apply it to downlink CoMP zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF), and see significant divergence from previous work. For example, we show that CoMP ZFBF does not increase throughput when the overhead channel delay is larger than 60% of the channel coherence time. We also find that, in most cases, coordinating with only one other cell is nearly optimum for downlink CoMP ZFBF.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figure

Ambient RF Energy Harvesting in Ultra-Dense Small Cell Networks: Performance and Trade-offs

In order to minimize electric grid power consumption, energy harvesting from ambient RF sources is considered as a promising technique for wireless charging of low-power devices. To illustrate the design considerations of RF-based ambient energy harvesting networks, this article first points out the primary challenges of implementing and operating such networks, including non-deterministic energy arrival patterns, energy harvesting mode selection, energy-aware cooperation among base stations (BSs), etc. A brief overview of the recent advancements and a summary of their shortcomings are then provided to highlight existing research gaps and possible future research directions. To this end, we investigate the feasibility of implementing RF-based ambient energy harvesting in ultra-dense small cell networks (SCNs) and examine the related trade-offs in terms of the energy efficiency and signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) outage probability of a typical user in the downlink. Numerical results demonstrate the significance of deploying a mixture of on-grid small base stations (SBSs)~(powered by electric grid) and off-grid SBSs~(powered by energy harvesting) and optimizing their corresponding proportions as a function of the intensity of active SBSs in the network.Comment: IEEE Wireless Communications, to appea

Meta Distribution of SIR in Dual-Hop Internet-of-Things (IoT) Networks

This paper characterizes the meta distribution of the downlink signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) attained at a typical Internet-of-Things (IoT) device in a dual-hop IoT network. The IoT device associates with either a serving macro base station (MBS) for direct transmissions or associates with a decode and forward (DF) relay for dual-hop transmissions, depending on the biased received signal power criterion. In contrast to the conventional success probability, the meta distribution is the distribution of the conditional success probability (CSP), which is conditioned on the locations of the wireless transmitters. The meta distribution is a fine-grained performance metric that captures important network performance metrics such as the coverage probability and the mean local delay as its special cases. Specifically, we derive the moments of the CSP in order to calculate analytic expressions for the meta distribution. Further, we derive mathematical expressions for special cases such as the mean local delay, variance of the CSP, and success probability of a typical IoT device and typical relay with different offloading biases. We take in consideration in our analysis the association probabilities of IoT devices. Finally, we investigate the impact of increasing the relay density on the mean local delay using numerical results

Joint Resource Allocation for eICIC in Heterogeneous Networks

Interference coordination between high-power macros and low-power picos deeply impacts the performance of heterogeneous networks (HetNets). It should deal with three challenges: user association with macros and picos, the amount of almost blank subframe (ABS) that macros should reserve for picos, and resource block (RB) allocation strategy in each eNB. We formulate the three issues jointly for sum weighted logarithmic utility maximization while maintaining proportional fairness of users. A class of distributed algorithms are developed to solve the joint optimization problem. Our framework can be deployed for enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC) in existing LTE-A protocols. Extensive evaluation are performed to verify the effectiveness of our algorithms.Comment: Accepted by Globecom 201

User-Centric Interference Nulling in Downlink Multi-Antenna Heterogeneous Networks

In heterogeneous networks (HetNets), strong interference due to spectrum reuse affects each user's signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), and hence is one limiting factor of network performance. In this paper, we propose a user-centric interference nulling (IN) scheme in a downlink large-scale HetNet to improve coverage/outage probability by improving each user's SIR. This IN scheme utilizes at most maximum IN degree of freedom (DoF) at each macro-BS to avoid interference to uniformly selected macro (pico) users with signal-to-individual-interference ratio (SIIR) below a macro (pico) IN threshold, where the maximum IN DoF and the two IN thresholds are three design parameters. Using tools from stochastic geometry, we first obtain a tractable expression of the coverage (equivalently outage) probability. Then, we analyze the asymptotic coverage/outage probability in the low and high SIR threshold regimes. The analytical results indicate that the maximum IN DoF can affect the order gain of the outage probability in the low SIR threshold regime, but cannot affect the order gain of the coverage probability in the high SIR threshold regime. Moreover, we characterize the optimal maximum IN DoF which optimizes the asymptotic coverage/outage probability. The optimization results reveal that the IN scheme can linearly improve the outage probability in the low SIR threshold regime, but cannot improve the coverage probability in the high SIR threshold regime. Finally, numerical results show that the proposed scheme can achieve good gains in coverage/outage probability over a maximum ratio beamforming scheme and a user-centric almost blank subframes (ABS) scheme.Comment: Transactions on Wireless Communications (under revision). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1504.0528

MmWave UAV Networks with Multi-cell Association: Performance Limit and Optimization

This paper aims to exploit the fundamental limits on the downlink coverage and spatial throughput performances of a cellular network comprised of a tier of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) base stations (BSs) using the millimeter wave (mmWave) band and a tier of ground BSs using the ultra high frequency (UHF) band. To reduce handover signaling overhead, the ground BSs take charge of control signaling delivery whereas the UAVs are in charge of payload data transmission so that users need to be simultaneously associated with a ground BS and a UAV in this network with a control-data plane-split architecture. We first propose a three-dimensional (3D) location distribution model of the UAVs using stochastic geometry which is able to generally characterize the positions of the UAVs in the sky. Using this 3D distribution model of UAVs, two performance metrics, i.e., multi-cell coverage probability and volume spectral efficiency, are proposed. Their explicit low-complexity expressions are derived and their upper limits are found when each of the UAVs and ground BSs is equipped with a massive antenna array. We further show that the multi-cell coverage probability and the volume spectral efficiency can be maximized by optimally deploying and positioning the UAVs in the sky and thereby their fundamental maximal limits are found. These important analytical findings are validated by numerical simulations.Comment: 17pages, 1 table, 8 figures, journal submissio