Load & Backhaul Aware Decoupled Downlink/Uplink Access in 5G Systems

Until the 4th Generation (4G) cellular 3GPP systems, a user equipment's (UE) cell association has been based on the downlink received power from the strongest base station. Recent work has shown that - with an increasing degree of heterogeneity in emerging 5G systems - such an approach is dramatically suboptimal, advocating for an independent association of the downlink and uplink where the downlink is served by the macro cell and the uplink by the nearest small cell. In this paper, we advance prior art by explicitly considering the cell-load as well as the available backhaul capacity during the association process. We introduce a novel association algorithm and prove its superiority w.r.t. prior art by means of simulations that are based on Vodafone's small cell trial network and employing a high resolution pathloss prediction and realistic user distributions. We also study the effect that different power control settings have on the performance of our algorithm.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures. Submitted to the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2015

Statistical Analysis of Path Losses for Sectorized Wireless Networks

© 1972-2012 IEEE. In modern mobile communication networks, such as 3G and 4G networks, sectorized antennas have been widely used to divide each cell into multiple sectors in order to improve coverage, spectrum efficiency, and quality of service. Large-scale path loss from a transmitting antenna to a receiving antenna should include: 1) propagation attenuation that depends on transmission distance; 2) shadowing that depends on surrounding environment; and 3) antenna loss that depends on a sectorized antenna pattern and transmission angle. An in-depth analysis of statistical characteristics of large-scale path losses involving with these three factors is crucial for the design, operation, evaluation, and optimization of modern sectorized wireless networks. In this paper, a sectorized antenna pattern is, for the first time, considered in the derivation of a closed-form expression of a probability density function (pdf) of large-scale path losses. Specifically, we first discover that the normalized pdf of propagation attenuation plus shadowing, which can be approximated by the Gaussian mixture model (GMM) with all system parameters, is fully determined by our newly defined metric 10/ln 10β/σs, namely, the attenuation exponent β to standard deviation of shadowing σs ratio (ASR). The convolution of GMM and antenna loss statistics is elaborately transformed to a series of differential equations. A closed-form pdf of large-scale path losses with sectorized antenna pattern can be obtained by solving these differential equations. To reduce the computational complexity, we further prove that the exciting sources of these differential equations can be tightly approximated by weighted Gaussian functions, and thus, the final solutions (i.e., pdf of path losses) can be derived in the form of Gaussian and Dawson functions. Our analytical results are verified by extensive numerical computation and Monte Carlo simulation results, e.g., the impact of ASR on the shape of pdf of propagation attenuation plus shadowing. Compared with traditional Gaussian-fitting approach, our newly derived pdf of large-scale path losses with sectorized antenna patterns is at least two orders of magnitude more accurate in terms of Kullback-Leibler divergence under typical propagation attenuation and shadowing conditions

Analytical Modeling of Interference Aware Power Control for the Uplink of Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Inter-cell interference is one of the main limiting factors in current Heterogeneous Cellular Networks (HCNs). Uplink Fractional Power Control (FPC) is a well known method that aims to cope with such limiting factor as well as to save battery live. In order to do that, the path losses associated with Mobile Terminal (MT) transmissions are partially compensated so that a lower interference is leaked towards neighboring cells. Classical FPC techniques only consider a set of parameters that depends on the own MT transmission, like desired received power at the Base Station (BS) or the path loss between the MT and its serving BS, among others. Contrary to classical FPC, in this paper we use stochastic geometry to analyze a power control mechanism that keeps the interference generated by each MT under a given threshold. We also consider a maximum transmitted power and a partial compensation of the path loss. Interestingly, our analysis reveals that such Interference Aware (IA) method can reduce the average power consumption and increase the average spectral efficiency. Additionally, the variance of the interference is reduced, thus improving the performance of Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) since the interference can be better estimated at the MT.Comment: 13 pages, 1 table and 7 figures. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

Mathematical Modelling and Analysis of Spatially Correlated Heterogeneous and Vehicular Networks - A Stochastic Geometry Approach

Heterogeneous Cellular Networks (HCNs) and vehicular communications are two key ingredients of future 5G communication networks, which aim at providing high data rates on the one former case and high reliability on the latter one. Nevertheless, in these two scenarios, interference is the main limiting factor, which makes achieving the required performance, i.e., data rate or reliability, a challenging task. Hence, in order to cope with such issue, concepts like uplink/downlink (UL/DL) decoupling, Interference-Aware (IA) strategies or cooperative communications with Cloud Radio Access Networks (CRANs) has been introduced for new releases of 4G and future 5G networks. Additionally, for the sake of increasing the data rates, new multiple access schemes like Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) has been proposed for 5G networks. All these techniques and concepts require accurate and tractable mathematical modelling for performance analysis. This analysis allows us to obtain theoretical insights about key performance indicators leading to a deep understanding about the considered techniques. Due to the random and irregular nature that exhibits HCNs, as well as vehicular networks, stochastic geometry has appeared recently as a promising tool for system-level modelling and analysis. Nevertheless, some features of HCNs and vehicular networks, like power control, scheduling or frequency planning, impose spatial correlations over the underlying point process that complicates significantly the mathematical analysis. In this thesis, it has been used stochastic geometry and point process theories to investigate the performance of these aforementioned techniques. Firstly, it is derived a mathematical framework for the analysis of an Interference-Aware Fractional Power Control (IAFPC) for interference mitigation in the UL of HCNs. The analysis reveals that IAFPC outperforms the classical FPC in terms of Spectral Efficiency (SE), average transmitted power, and mean and variance of the interference. Then, it is investigated the performance of a scheduling algorithm where the Mobile Terminals (MTs) may be turned off if they cause a level of interference greater than a given threshold. Secondly, a multi-user UL model to assess the coverage probability of different MTs in each cell is proposed. Then, the coverage probability of cellular systems under Hoyt fading (Nakagami-q) is studied. This fading model, allows us to consider more severe fading conditions than Rayleigh, which is normally the considered fading model for the sake of tractability. Thirdly, a novel NOMA-based scheme for CRANs is proposed, modelled and analyzed. In this scheme, two users are scheduled in the same resources according to NOMA; however the performance of cell-edge users is enhanced by means of coordinated beamforming. Finally, the performance of a decentralized Medium Access Control (MAC) algorithm for vehicular communications is investigated. With this strategy, the cellular network provides frequency and time synchronization for direct Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communication, which is based on its geographical information. The analysis demonstrates that there exists an operation regime where the performance is noise-limited. Then, the optimal transmit power that maximizes the Energy Efficiency (EE) of the system subject to a minimum capture probability constraint is derived