Fundamentals of Inter-cell Overhead Signaling in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Heterogeneous base stations (e.g. picocells, microcells, femtocells and distributed antennas) will become increasingly essential for cellular network capacity and coverage. Up until now, little basic research has been done on the fundamentals of managing so much infrastructure -- much of it unplanned -- together with the carefully planned macro-cellular network. Inter-cell coordination is in principle an effective way of ensuring different infrastructure components behave in a way that increases, rather than decreases, the key quality of service (QoS) metrics. The success of such coordination depends heavily on how the overhead is shared, and the rate and delay of the overhead sharing. We develop a novel framework to quantify overhead signaling for inter-cell coordination, which is usually ignored in traditional 1-tier networks, and assumes even more importance in multi-tier heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs). We derive the overhead quality contour for general K-tier HCNs -- the achievable set of overhead packet rate, size, delay and outage probability -- in closed-form expressions or computable integrals under general assumptions on overhead arrivals and different overhead signaling methods (backhaul and/or wireless). The overhead quality contour is further simplified for two widely used models of overhead arrivals: Poisson and deterministic arrival process. This framework can be used in the design and evaluation of any inter-cell coordination scheme. It also provides design insights on backhaul and wireless overhead channels to handle specific overhead signaling requirements.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figure

Open, Closed, and Shared Access Femtocells in the Downlink

A fundamental choice in femtocell deployments is the set of users which are allowed to access each femtocell. Closed access restricts the set to specifically registered users, while open access allows any mobile subscriber to use any femtocell. Which one is preferable depends strongly on the distance between the macrocell base station (MBS) and femtocell. The main results of the paper are lemmas which provide expressions for the SINR distribution for various zones within a cell as a function of this MBS-femto distance. The average sum throughput (or any other SINR-based metric) of home users and cellular users under open and closed access can be readily determined from these expressions. We show that unlike in the uplink, the interests of home and cellular users are in conflict, with home users preferring closed access and cellular users preferring open access. The conflict is most pronounced for femtocells near the cell edge, when there are many cellular users and fewer femtocells. To mitigate this conflict, we propose a middle way which we term shared access in which femtocells allocate an adjustable number of time-slots between home and cellular users such that a specified minimum rate for each can be achieved. The optimal such sharing fraction is derived. Analysis shows that shared access achieves at least the overall throughput of open access while also satisfying rate requirements, while closed access fails for cellular users and open access fails for the home user.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Self-optimized Coverage Coordination in Femtocell Networks

This paper proposes a self-optimized coverage coordination scheme for two-tier femtocell networks, in which a femtocell base station adjusts the transmit power based on the statistics of the signal and the interference power that is measured at a femtocell downlink. Furthermore, an analytic expression is derived for the coverage leakage probability that a femtocell coverage area leaks into an outdoor macrocell. The coverage analysis is verified by simulation, which shows that the proposed scheme provides sufficient indoor femtocell coverage and that the femtocell coverage does not leak into an outdoor macrocell.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Spectrum-sharing method for co-existence between 5G OFDM-based system and fixed service

This study investigates the co-existence of fifth generation (5G) mobile communication systems and fixed service (FS) in the 28-GHz band through the utilization and modification of an existing spectrum-sharing method known as the advanced minimum coupling loss (A-MCL) model. The proposed model is based on the power spectral density (PSD) overlap between the 5G orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based system and the FS. Spectrum-sharing studies typically need 5G parameters, such as the spectrum emission mask (SEM); however, no such information is available for the new system to achieve accurate results. The proposed model is suitable for spectrum-sharing studies between 5G and other wireless systems without the need for the 5G SEM. Moreover, the existing model is implemented in a new application (i.e., 5G) in the 28-GHz band with different 5G bandwidths. Furthermore, the FS parameters and its frequency allocation are selected based on the Canadian standards to obtain preliminary results for the co-existence between the 5G system and the FS. Results show that co-existence is feasible when certain distances are applied, especially with higher 5G bandwidths (such as 0.5 and 1 GHz) when the 5G system acts as an interferer. In addition, the antenna position plays a major role in reducing the required separation distances between the victim receiver and the interfering transmitter. This model can be used for any future mobile generation such as the sixth generation (6G) mobile system if its PSD is known. This study is concurrent with the worldwide spectrum-sharing studies requested by the International Telecommunication Union for WRC-19

The Feasibility of Coexistence Between 5G and Existing Services in the IMT-2020 Candidate Bands in Malaysia

In 2015, the international telecommunication union (ITU) proposed 11 candidate millimeter-wave bands between 24 and 86 GHz for the deployment of future fifth mobile generation (5G) broadband systems. Furthermore, the ITU called for spectrum-sharing studies in these bands. Since 5G specifications are not yet defined, the utilization of radio spectrum by 5G mobile systems will assist in identifying these specifications. This paper introduces Malaysia as a case study for the deployment of 5G systems. This includes a discussion of the current status of the Malaysian telecommunication market. Then, we investigate the current services that are already deployed in the proposed bands. Our investigation shows that the fixed (F) service is the most deployed as a primary service in the candidate bands. For this reason, a preliminary spectrum-sharing study is conducted on the basis of a modified 5G spectrum-sharing model to evaluate the feasibility of coexistence between 5G and F services in the 28-GHz band. Our modified methodology can be used for spectrum-sharing studies between 5G and any other services for an initial spectrum-sharing investigation. The results show that the F service will be severely affected by the 5G system transition in the 28-GHz band, especially in the base station (BS)-to-BS sharing scenario. The best band from the perspective of current spectrum allocation for 5G systems is the 45-GHz (i.e., 45.5-47 GHz) band, since it is already reserved for mobile service for primary allocation and not utilized. This paper is carried out concurrently with current worldwide efforts investigating spectrum sharing, as requested by the ITU in agenda item 1.13 for the next world radio conference 2019

Coexistence of 5G with satellite services in the millimeter-wave band

In this study, a new method is proposed to confirm the possibility of coexistence between the existing satellite services and potential fifth-generation (5G) cellular services in the millimeter-wave band according to the frequency-designation agenda of International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)-2020 for 5G. To evaluate the accumulated interference power of numerous 5G systems distributed globally at a satellite receiver, we extend the satellite's interference reception area to the entire coverage area, from which only the land area is extracted using the geospatial terrain data of Earth in three dimensions. This enables more accurate interference assessment than conventional methods that only consider the footprint of the satellite's 3-dB beamwidth. We also place the IMT-2020 (5G) systems in the coverage area using the IMT-2020 parameters and modeling documents for the International Telecommunication Union's coexistence study. The propagation loss is modeled considering the clutter loss, building entry loss, and attenuation from atmospheric gases. Subsequently, we analyze the interference power received by a fixed satellite service (FSS) satellite operating in the same band and an Earth exploration satellite service (EESS) passive sensor operating in an adjacent channel. Our simulation shows that the FSS satellite receives up to 7.9dB more interference than that obtained from the existing method. Although this is a substantial difference, we find that the protection criteria is still satisfied. However, all EESS passive sensors do not meet the protection criteria in most scenarios, and additional frequency separation or interference mitigation techniques are required to protect these sensors. The proposed method is also applicable to the analysis of non-terrestrial network interference from airships, balloons, unmanned aerial vehicles, etc