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

Radio network management in cognitive LTE-Femtocell Systems

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University London.There is a strong uptake of femtocell deployment as small cell application platforms in the upcoming LTE networks. In such two-tier networks of LTEfemtocell base stations, a large portion of the assigned spectrum is used sporadically leading to underutilisation of valuable frequency resources. Novel spectrum access techniques are necessary to solve these current spectrum inefficiency problems. Therefore, spectrum management solutions should have the features to improve spectrum access in both temporal and spatial manner. Cognitive Radio (CR) with the Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) is considered to be the key technology in this research in order to increase the spectrum efficiency. This is an effective solution to allow a group of Secondary Users (SUs) to share the radio spectrum initially allocated to the Primary User (PUs) at no interference. The core aim of this thesis is to develop new cognitive LTE-femtocell systems that offer a 4G vision, to facilitate the radio network management in order to increase the network capacity and further improve spectrum access probabilities. In this thesis, a new spectrum management model for cognitive radio networks is considered to enable a seamless integration of multi-access technology with existing networks. This involves the design of efficient resource allocation algorithms that are able to respond to the rapid changes in the dynamic wireless environment and primary users activities. Throughout this thesis a variety of network upgraded functions are developed using application simulation scenarios. Therefore, the proposed algorithms, mechanisms, methods, and system models are not restricted in the considered networks, but rather have a wider applicability to be used in other technologies. This thesis mainly investigates three aspects of research issues relating to the efficient management of cognitive networks: First, novel spectrum resource management modules are proposed to maximise the spectrum access by rapidly detecting the available transmission opportunities. Secondly, a developed pilot power controlling algorithm is introduced to minimise the power consumption by considering mobile position and application requirements. Also, there is investigation on the impact of deploying different numbers of femtocell base stations in LTE domain to identify the optimum cell size for future networks. Finally, a novel call admission control mechanism for mobility management is proposed to support seamless handover between LTE and femtocell domains. This is performed by assigning high speed mobile users to the LTE system to avoid unnecessary handovers. The proposed solutions were examined by simulation and numerical analysis to show the strength of cognitive femtocell deployment for the required applications. The results show that the new system design based on cognitive radio configuration enable an efficient resource management in terms of spectrum allocation, adaptive pilot power control, and mobile handover. The proposed framework and algorithms offer a novel spectrum management for self organised LTE-femtocell architecture. Eventually, this research shows that certain architectures fulfilling spectrum management requirements are implementable in practice and display good performance in dynamic wireless environments which recommends the consideration of CR systems in LTE and femtocell networks

Coexistence of Wi-Fi and Heterogeneous Small Cell Networks Sharing Unlicensed Spectrum

As two major players in terrestrial wireless communications, Wi-Fi systems and cellular networks have different origins and have largely evolved separately. Motivated by the exponentially increasing wireless data demand, cellular networks are evolving towards a heterogeneous and small cell network architecture, wherein small cells are expected to provide very high capacity. However, due to the limited licensed spectrum for cellular networks, any effort to achieve capacity growth through network densification will face the challenge of severe inter-cell interference. In view of this, recent standardization developments have started to consider the opportunities for cellular networks to use the unlicensed spectrum bands, including the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands that are currently used by Wi-Fi, Zigbee and some other communication systems. In this article, we look into the coexistence of Wi-Fi and 4G cellular networks sharing the unlicensed spectrum. We introduce a network architecture where small cells use the same unlicensed spectrum that Wi-Fi systems operate in without affecting the performance of Wi-Fi systems. We present an almost blank subframe (ABS) scheme without priority to mitigate the co-channel interference from small cells to Wi-Fi systems, and propose an interference avoidance scheme based on small cells estimating the density of nearby Wi-Fi access points to facilitate their coexistence while sharing the same unlicensed spectrum. Simulation results show that the proposed network architecture and interference avoidance schemes can significantly increase the capacity of 4G heterogeneous cellular networks while maintaining the service quality of Wi-Fi systems

Fog Radio Access Networks: Mobility management, interference mitigation and resource optimization

In order to make Internet connections ubiquitous and autonomous in our daily lives, maximizing the utilization of radio resources and social information is one of the major research topics in future mobile communication technologies. Fog radio access network (FRAN) is regarded as a promising paradigm for the fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks. FRAN integrates fog computing with RAN and makes full use of the edge of networks. FRAN would be different in networking, computing, storage and control as compared with conventional radio access networks (RAN) and the emerging cloud RAN. In this article, we provide a description of the FRAN architecture, and discuss how the distinctive characteristics of FRAN make it possible to efficiently alleviate the burden on the fronthaul, backhaul and backbone networks, as well as reduce content delivery latencies. We will focus on the mobility management, interference mitigation, and resource optimization in FRAN. Our simulation results show that the proposed FRAN architecture and the associated mobility and resource management mechanisms can reduce the signaling cost and increase the net utility for the RAN