D6.2 - Prototype description and field trial results

Deliverable D6.2 del projecte FARAMIRPostprint (published version

コグニティブネットワークとヘテロジニアスネットワークの協調によるスペクトルの効率的利用に関する研究

学位の種別: 課程博士審査委員会委員 : （主査）東京大学教授 瀬崎 薫, 東京大学教授 浅見 徹, 東京大学教授 江崎 浩, 東京大学准教授 川原 圭博, 東京大学教授 森川 博之, 東京大学教授 相田 仁University of Tokyo(東京大学

On placement and dynamic power control of femtocells in LTE HetNets

Femto cells a.k.a. Low Power Nodes (LPNs) are used to improve indoor data rates as well as to reduce traffic load on macro Base Stations (BSs) in LTE cellular networks. These LPNs are deployed inside office buildings and residential apartment complexes to provide high data rates to indoor Users. With high SINR (Signal-to-Interference plus Noise Ratio) the users experience good throughput, but the SINR decreases significantly because of interference and obstacles such as building walls, present in the communication path. So, efficient placement of Femtos in buildings while considering Macro-Femto interference is very crucial for attaining desirable SINR. At the same time, minimizing the power leakage in order to improve the signal strength of outdoor users in a high interference (HIZone) around the building area is important. In our work, we have considered obstacles (walls, floors) and interference between Macro and Femto BSs. To be fair to both indoor and outdoor users, we designed an efficient placement and power control SON (Self organizing Network) algorithm which optimally places Femtos and dynamically adjusts the transmission power of Femtos based on the occupancy of Macro users in the HIZone. To do this, we solve two Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) methods namely: Minimize number of Femtos (MinNF) method which guarantees threshold SINR (SINRTh) -2dB for all indoor users and optimal Femto power (OptFP) allocation method which guarantees SINRTh (- 4 dB) for indoor users with the Macro users SINR degradation as lesser than 2dB

Cooperation strategies for inter-cell interference mitigation in OFDMA systems

Recently the use of modern cellular networks has drastically changed with the emerging Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) technology. Homogeneous networks which were initially designed for voice-centric and low data rates face unprecedented challenges for meeting the increasing traffic demands of high data-driven applications and their important quality of service requirements. Therefore, these networks are moving towards the so called Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets). HetNets represent a new paradigm for cellular networks as their nodes have different characteristics such as transmission power and radio frequency coverage area. Consequently, a HetNet shows completely different interference characteristics compared to homogeneous deployment and attention must be paid to these disparities when different tiers are collocated together. This is mostly due to the potential spectrum frequency reuse by the involved tiers in the HetNets. Hence, efficient inter-cell interference mitigation solutions in co-channel deployments of HetNets remain a challenge for both industry and academic researchers. This thesis focuses on LTE-A HetNet systems which are based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Access (OFDMA) modulation. Our aim is to investigate the aggressive interference issue that appears when different types of base stations are jointly deployed together and especially in two cases, namely Macro-Femtocells and Macro-Picocells co-existence. We propose new practical power adjustment solutions for managing inter-cell interference dynamically for both cases. In the first part dedicated to Femtocells and Macrocell coexistence, we design a MBS-assisted femtocell power adjustment strategy which takes into account femtocells users performance while mitigating the inter-cell interference on victim macrocell users. Further, we propose a new cooperative and context-aware interference mitigation method which is derived for realistic scenarios involving mobility of users and their varying locations. We proved numerically that the Femtocells are able to maintain their interference under a desirable threshold by adjusting their transmission power. Our strategies provide an efficient means for achieving the desired level of macrocell/femtocell throughput trade-off. In the second part of the studies where Picocells are deployed under the umbrella of the Macrocell, we paid a special attention and efforts to the interference management in the situation where Picocells are configured to set up a cell range expansion. We suggest a MBS-assisted collaborative scheme powered by an analytical model to predict the mobility of Macrocell users passing through the cell range expansion area of the picocell. Our goal is to adapt the muting ratio ruling the frequency resource partitioning between both tiers according to the mobility behavior of the range-expanded users, thereby providing an efficient trade-off between Macrocell and Picocell achievable throughputs.Récemment, l'utilisation des réseaux cellulaires a radicalement changé avec l’émergence de la quatrième génération (4G) de systèmes de télécommunications mobiles LTE/LTE-A (Long Term Evolution-Advanced). Les réseaux de générations précédentes (3G), initialement conçus pour le transport de la voix et les données à faible et moyen débits, ont du mal à faire face à l’augmentation accrue du trafic de données multimédia tout en répondant à leurs fortes exigences et contraintes en termes de qualité de service (QdS). Pour mieux répondre à ces besoins, les réseaux 4G ont introduit le paradigme des Réseaux Hétérogènes (HetNet).Les réseaux HetNet introduisent une nouvelle notion d’hétérogénéité pour les réseaux cellulaires en introduisant le concept des smalls cells (petites cellules) qui met en place des antennes à faible puissance d’émission. Ainsi, le réseau est composé de plusieurs couches (tiers) qui se chevauchent incluant la couverture traditionnelle macro-cellulaire, les pico-cellules, les femto-cellules, et les relais. Outre les améliorations des couvertures radio en environnements intérieurs, les smalls cells permettent d’augmenter la capacité du système par une meilleure utilisation du spectre et en rapprochant l’utilisateur de son point d’accès au réseau. Une des conséquences directes de cette densification cellulaire est l’interférence générée entre les différentes cellules des diverses couches quand ces dernières réutilisent les mêmes fréquences. Aussi, la définition de solutions efficaces de gestion des interférences dans ce type de systèmes constitue un de leurs défis majeurs. Cette thèse s’intéresse au problème de gestion des interférences dans les systèmes hétérogènes LTE-A. Notre objectif est d’apporter des solutions efficaces et originales au problème d’interférence dans ce contexte via des mécanismes d’ajustement de puissance des petites cellules. Nous avons pour cela distingués deux cas d’étude à savoir un déploiement à deux couches macro-femtocellules et macro-picocellules. Dans la première partie dédiée à un déploiement femtocellule et macrocellule, nous concevons une stratégie d'ajustement de puissance des femtocellules assisté par la macrocellule et qui prend en compte les performances des utilisateurs des femtocells tout en atténuant l'interférence causée aux utilisateurs des macrocellules sur leurs liens montants. Cette solution offre l’avantage de la prise en compte de paramètres contextuels locaux aux femtocellules (tels que le nombre d’utilisateurs en situation de outage) tout en considérant des scénarios de mobilité réalistes. Nous avons montré par simulation que les interférences sur les utilisateurs des macrocellules sont sensiblement réduites et que les femtocellules sont en mesure de dynamiquement ajuster leur puissance d'émission pour atteindre les objectifs fixés en termes d’équilibre entre performance des utilisateurs des macrocellules et celle de leurs propres utilisateurs. Dans la seconde partie de la thèse, nous considérons le déploiement de picocellules sous l'égide de la macrocellule. Nous nous sommes intéressés ici aux solutions d’extension de l’aire picocellulaire qui permettent une meilleure association utilisateur/cellule permettant de réduire l’interférence mais aussi offrir une meilleure efficacité spectrale. Nous proposons donc une approche basée sur un modèle de prédiction de la mobilité des utilisateurs qui permet de mieux ajuster la proportion de bande passante à partager entre la macrocellule et la picocellule en fonction de la durée de séjour estimée de ces utilisateurs ainsi que de leur demandes en bande passante. Notre solution a permis d’offrir un bon compromis entre les débits réalisables de la Macro et des picocellules

Application of fractional frequency reuse technique for cancellation of interference in heterogeneous cellular network

The continuously growing number of mobile devices in terms of hardware and applications augments the necessity for higher data rates and a larger capacity in wireless communication networks. The Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard was designed to provide these mobile users with a better throughput, coverage and a lower latency. This thesis studies a specific area in Heterogeneous Networks; the subject of femtocells. The aim of femtocells is to provide better indoor coverage so as to allow users to benefit from higher data rates while reducing the load on the macro cell. Femtocells were proposed for Long Term Evolution (LTE) for indoor coverage. It is achieved using access points by home users. However, co-channel interference is a serious issue with femtocells that may dramatically reduce the performance of femto and macrocells. The system capacity and throughput decreases. As femtocells use the same spectrum as the macrocells, and the femtocells are deployed without proper planning, interference from femtocells to macrocells becomes a major issue. In this thesis, the interference from femtocells to macrocells is studied and a solution for the mitigation of this kind of interference is suggested using FFR mechanism. In our proposed scheme for interference avoidance, femtocells use those frequency sub bands which are currently not being used within the macrocell, the process of assigning the frequency bands is based on FFR. The simulation results suggest that the suggested technique enhances total/edge throughputs, and optimizes the SINR and CDF of femtocells users (FUEs) and reduces the outage probability of the network

On Improving Data Rates of Users in LTE HetNets

The proliferation of smartphones and tablets has led to huge demand for data services over cellular networks. Cisco VNI mobile forecast (2014-2019) tells that although only 3.9% of mobile connections were Long Term Evolution (LTE) based they accounted for 40% of the mobile traffic and this will rise to 51% by 2019, by which the mobile data usage will grow 11 fold to over 15 Exabytes per month. Reports by Cisco and Huawei tell that 70% of the traffic is generated in indoor environments such as homes, enterprise buildings and hotspots. Hence, it is very important for mobile operators to improve coverage and capacity of indoor environments. Indoor data demand is partly met by intensifying the deployment of Macro Base Stations (MBSs/eNodeBs) in LTE cellular networks. Owing to many obstacles in the communication path between MBS and users inside the building, radio signals attenuate at a faster rate as the distance increases. Thus, Indoor User Equipments (IUEs) receive still low signal strength ( i.e., Signal-to-Noise Ratio, SNR) compared to Outdoor User Equipments (OUEs). To address this problem, one can deploy a large number of Low Power Nodes (LPNs) a.k.a. small cells (e.g., Picos and Femtos) under an umbrella MBS coverage and thereby form an LTE Heterogeneous Network (HetNet). Small cells are mainly being deployed in homes, enterprise buildings and hotspots like shopping malls and airports to improve indoor coverage and data rates. This is a win-win situation as telecom operators also benefit by reduction in their CAPEX and OPEX. Though the deployment of Femtocells improves indoor data rates, the resulting LTE HetNet may face a host of problems like co-tier and cross-tier interference (due to frequency reuse one in LTE) and frequent handovers (due to short coverage areas of Femtocells). Deployment of Femtos inside a building can lead to signal leakage at the edges/corners of the buildings. This causes cross-tier interference and degrades the performance of OUEs in High Interference Zone (HIZone) around the building area, which are connected to one of the MBSs in the LTE HetNet. Arbitrary placement of Femtos can lead to high co-channel cross-tier interference among Femtos and Macro BSs and coverage holes inside buildings. If Femtos are placed without power control, this leads to high power consumption and high inter-cell interference in large scale deployments. Our goal is to address these problems by developing efficient architecture, Femto placement and power control schemes in LTE HetNets. Random or unplanned placement of the Femtos leads to poor SNR and hence affects achievable data rates of IUEs. Hence, placement of Femtos is important for the cellular operators to perform planned deployment of minimum number of Femtos with no coverage holes and guarantee a good signal quality with no co-tier interference. Once the placement of Femtos is done optimally in enterprise environments, operators need to ensure that traffic load is evenly distributed among neighboring Femtos for improving Quality of Service (QoS) of IUEs by efficiently utilizing the network resources. In traditional cellular networks, the uplink access and downlink access of UEs are coupled to the same (Femto) cell. Suppose a Femto is fully loaded when compared to its neighboring Femtos, the traditional offloading or load balancing algorithms will try offloading some of the UEs for both their uplink and downlink access from the loaded cell to one of less loaded neighboring cells (i.e., target cell) provided that these UEs could get connected to the chosen target cell. This type of offloading is a forced handover to reduce traffic imbalance and trigger for handover is not based on better signal strength from the target cell. But, the offloaded UEs are connected for both their uplink and downlink access to the same target cell. Since UEs are most likely separated by walls and floors from their connected cells in enterprise environments, these offloaded UEs now have to transmit with higher transmit power in the uplink and thereby affects their battery lives. In order to reduce the battery drain for the offloaded UEs while maintaining their QoS, we employ the Decoupled Uplink and Downlink (DUD) access method in such a way that, the uplink of UE is connected to the closest Femto while the downlink is connected to a less loaded neighboring Femto. To maximize the utilization of the limited operating spectrum and provide higher data rate for IUEs, operators can configure Femtos in open access mode with frequency reuse one (i.e., all Femtos and MBSs operates on a same frequency) in LTE HetNets. However, this leads to high co-tier interference and cross-tier interference. Another problem in enterprise buildings having Femtos is frequent handovers, that happens when IUEs move from one room/floor to another room/floor inside the building. This leads to degradation of network performance in terms of increased signaling overhead and low throughputs. In order to reduce this kind of unnecessary handovers in enterprise buildings, Femtos should be placed optimally with handover constraints. Hence, we obtain the optimal coordinates from the OptHO model by adding handover constraints to the Minimize Number of Femtos (MinNF) model which guarantees threshold Signal-to-Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) of -2 dB for all IUEs inside the building. Such optimized deployment of Femtos reduces the number of handovers while guaranteeing good SINR to all IUEs. In LTE HetNets, even though planned deployment of Femtos in open access mode boosts the IUEs performance, the power leakage from indoor Femtos create interferix ence to the OUEs in the HIZone in the buildings surrounding areas. We propose an efficient placement and power control SON (Self organizing Network) algorithm which optimally places Femtos and dynamically adjusts the transmit power of Femtos based on the occupancy of Macro connected OUEs in the HIZone. To do this, we use the same MinNF model to place the Femtos optimally and solve Optimal Femto Power (OptFP) allocation problem (Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP)) which guarantees threshold SINR of -4 dB for IUEs with the Macro users SINR degradation as lesser than 2 dB. In the OptFP model, Femto’s transmit power is tuned dynamically according to the occupancy of OUEs in the HIZone. But the presence of even a single OUE in the HIZone decreases SINR of numerous IUEs, which is not fair to IUEs. In order to address this issue, we propose two solutions a) On improving SINR in LTE HetNets with D2D relays and b) A novel resource allocation and power control mechanism for Hybrid Access Femtos in LTE HetNets, which we describe in the following two paragraphs. To guarantee certain minimum SINR and fairness to both IUEs and OUEs in HIZone, we consider a system model by applying the concept of Device-to-Device (D2D) communication wherein free/idle IUEs connected to Femto act like UE-relays (i.e., UE-like BS, forwarding downlink data plane traffic for some of the HIZone users connected to MBS). We formulate a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILP) optimization model which efficiently establishes D2D pairs between free/idle celledge IUEs and HIZone users by guaranteeing certain SINRT h for both IUEs and HIZone users. As D2D MILP model takes more computation time, it is not usable in real-world scenarios for establishing D2D pairs on the fly. Hence, we propose a two-step D2D heuristic algorithm for establishing D2D pairs. In above works, we assume that Femtos are configured in open access mode. But Hybrid Access Femtocells (HAFs) are favored by the operators because they ensure the paid Subscribed Group (SG) users certain QoS and then try to maximize the system capacity by serving near-by Non Subscribed Group (NSG) users in a best-effort manner. To reap in the benefits of HAFs, the operators need to employ effective resource sharing and scheduling mechanisms to contain co-tier and cross-tier interference arising out of reuse one in the HetNet system. Towards this, we address various challenges in terms of deployment and operation of HAFs in indoor environments. We propose an Optimal Placement of hybrid access Femtos (OPF) model which ensures a certain SINRT h inside the building and a certain SINRT h in the HIZone of the building. Unlike in previous optimization models, in this model, users in HIZone are connected to HAF s deployed inside the building. Also we propose a decentralized Dynamic Bandwidth Allocation (BWA) mechanism which divides the available HAF bandwidth between the two sets of user groups: SG and NSG. In order to mitigate co-tier and cross-tier interference, we then propose a dynamic Optimal Power Control (OPC) mechanism which adjusts the transmit powers of HAFs whenever the users in the HIZone cannot be served by the HAFs. In such a case, HIZone users connect to an MBS instead. Since the OPC problem is hard to solve in polynomial time, we also present a Sub-Optimal Power Control (SOPC) mechanism. To maintain fair resource allocation between SG and NSG users, we propose an Enhanced Priority (EP) scheduling mechanism which employs two schedulers which are based on the Proportional Fair (PF) and the Priority Set (PS) scheduling mechanisms. In above works, placement of Femtos is optimized to reduce co-channel co-tier interference among neighboring Femtos and transmit power of Femtos is optimized to reduce cross-tier interference between MBSs and Femtos. But, for arbitrary deployed Femtos, Inter Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC) techniques could be employed to address co-tier interference problem among Femtos which are connected with each other over X2 interface. Hence, in this work, we propose an ICIC technique, Variable Radius (VR) algorithm which dynamically increases or decreases the cell edge/non-cell edge regions of Femtos and efficiently allocates radio resources among cell edge/non-cell edge regions of Femtos so that the interference between neighboring Femtos can be avoided. We implement the proposed VR algorithm on top of PF scheduler in NS-3 simulator and find that it significantly improves average network throughput when compared to existing techniques in the literature

Interference management and decentralized channel access schemes in hotspot-aided cellular networks

A system and method are provided wherein one or more femtocell base stations are deployed within a range of a cellular base station and utilize substantially the same frequency band as the cellular base station. Each femtocell base station may be configured to employ one or more interference avoidance techniques such that coexistence between the cellular and the corresponding femtocell base station is enabled. The interference avoidance techniques employed may include use of randomized time or frequency hopping; randomly selecting a predetermined number, or identifying one or more unutilized, frequency subchannels for signal transmission; using two or more transmit and two or more receive antennas; nulling one or more transmissions in a direction of a nearby cellular base station user; handing off at least one cellular user to one of the femtocell base stations and vice versa; and/or reducing the transmission power of at least one femtocell base station.Board of Regents, University of Texas Syste

5G and beyond networks

This chapter investigates the Network Layer aspects that will characterize the merger of the cellular paradigm and the IoT architectures, in the context of the evolution towards 5G-and-beyond, including some promising emerging services as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or Base Stations, and V2X communications

Context-aware Self-Optimization in Small-Cell Networks

Most mobile communications take place at indoor environments, especially in commercial and corporate scenarios. These places normally present coverage and capacity issues due to the poor signal quality, which degrade the end-user Quality of Experience (QoE). In these cases, mobile operators are offering small cells to overcome the indoor issues, being femtocells the main deployed base stations. Femtocell networks provide significant benefits to mobile operators and their clients. However, the massive integration and the particularities of femtocells, make the maintenance of these infrastructures a challenge for engineers. In this sense, Self-Organizing Networks (SON) techniques play an important role. These techniques are a key feature to intelligently automate network operation, administration and management procedures. SON mechanisms are based on the analysis of the mobile network alarms, counters and indicators. In parallel, electronics, sensors and software applications evolve rapidly and are everywhere. Thanks to this, valuable context information can be gathered, which properly managed can improve SON techniques performance. Within possible context data, one of the most active topics is the indoor positioning due to the immediate interest on indoor location-based services (LBS). At indoor commercial and corporate environments, user densities and traffic vary in spatial and temporal domain. These situations lead to degrade cellular network performance, being temporary traffic fluctuations and focused congestions one of the most common issues. Load balancing techniques, which have been identified as a use case in self-optimization paradigm for Long Term Evolution (LTE), can alleviate these congestion problems. This use case has been widely studied in macrocellular networks and outdoor scenarios. However, the particularities of femtocells, the characteristics of indoor scenarios and the influence of users’ mobility pattern justify the development of new solutions. The goal of this PhD thesis is to design and develop novel and automatic solutions for temporary traffic fluctuations and focused network congestion issues in commercial and corporate femtocell environments. For that purpose, the implementation of an efficient management architecture to integrate context data into the mobile network and SON mechanisms is required. Afterwards, an accurate indoor positioning system is developed, as a possible inexpensive solution for context-aware SON. Finally, advanced self-optimization methods to shift users from overloaded cells to other cells with spare resources are designed. These methods tune femtocell configuration parameters based on network information, such as ratio of active users, and context information, such as users’ position. All these methods are evaluated in both a dynamic LTE system-level simulator and in a field-trial

Performance assessment & synergic operation of algorithmic solutions enabling opportunistic networks– D4.2

Deliverable D4.2 del projecte europeu OneFITPeer ReviewedPostprint (updated version