Optimized Cell Planning for Network Slicing in Heterogeneous Wireless Communication Networks

We propose a cell planning scheme to maximize the resource efficiency of a wireless communication network while considering quality-of-service requirements imposed by different mobile services. In dense and heterogeneous cellular 5G networks, the available time-frequency resources are orthogonally partitioned among different slices, which are serviced by the cells. The proposed scheme achieves a joint optimization of the resource distribution between network slices, the allocation of cells to operate on different slices, and the allocation of users to cells. Since the original problem formulation is computationally intractable, we propose a convex inner approximation. Simulations show that the proposed approach optimizes the resource efficiency and enables a service-centric network design paradigm.Comment: This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of the IEEE Communications Letters, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8368293, (c) 2018 IEE