Macrocell

Abstract: For small cell technology to significantly increase the capacity of tower-based cellular networks, mobile users will need to be actively pushed onto the more lightly loaded tiers (corresponding to, e.g., pico and femtocells), even if they offer a lower instantaneous SINR than the macrocell base station (BS). Optimizing a function of the long-term rate for each user requires (in general) a massive utility maximization problem over all the SINRs and BS loads. On the other hand, an actual implementation will likely resort to a simple biasing approach where a BS in tier j is treated as having its SINR multiplied by a factor Aj ≥ 1, which makes it appear more attractive than the heavily-loaded macrocell. This paper bridges the gap between these approaches through several physical relaxations of the network-wide association problem, whose solution is NP hard. We provide a low-complexity distributed algorithm that converges to a near-optimal solution with a theoretical performance guarantee, and we observe that simple per-tier biasing loses surprisingly little, if the bias values Aj are chosen carefully. Numerical results show a large (3.5x) throughput gain for cell-edge users and a 2x rate gain for median users relative to a maximizing received power association.

Abstract: We present a statistical path loss model derived from 1.9 GHz experimental data collected across the United States in 95 existing macrocells. The model is for suburban areas, and it distinguishes between different terrain categories. Moreover, it applies to distances and base antenna heights not well-covered by existing models. The characterization used is a linear curve fitting the decibel path loss to the decibel-distance, with a Gaussian random variation about that curve due to shadow fading. The slope of the linear curve (corresponding to the path loss exponent, /spl gamma/) is shown to be a random variate from one macrocell to another, as is the standard deviation /spl sigma/ of the shadow fading. These two parameters are statistically modeled, with the dependencies on base antenna height and terrain category made explicit. The resulting path loss model applies to base antenna heights from 10 to 80 m, base-to-terminal distances from 0.1 to 8 km, and three distinct terrain categories.

Abstract: In this paper we develop a tractable framework for SINR analysis in downlink heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs) with flexible cell association policies. The HCN is modeled as a multi-tier cellular network where each tier's base stations (BSs) are randomly located and have a particular transmit power, path loss exponent, spatial density, and bias towards admitting mobile users. For example, as compared to macrocells, picocells would usually have lower transmit power, higher path loss exponent (lower antennas), higher spatial density (many picocells per macrocell), and a positive bias so that macrocell users are actively encouraged to use the more lightly loaded picocells. In the present paper we implicitly assume all base stations have full queues; future work should relax this. For this model, we derive the outage probability of a typical user in the whole network or a certain tier, which is equivalently the downlink SINR cumulative distribution function. The results are accurate for all SINRs, and their expressions admit quite simple closed-forms in some plausible special cases. We also derive the average ergodic rate of the typical user, and the minimum average user throughput - the smallest value among the average user throughputs supported by one cell in each tier. We observe that neither the number of BSs or tiers changes the outage probability or average ergodic rate in an interference-limited full-loaded HCN with unbiased cell association (no biasing), and observe how biasing alters the various metrics.

Abstract: In a conventional cellular system, devices are not allowed to directly communicate with each other in the licensed cellular bandwidth and all communications take place through the base stations. In this article, we envision a two-tier cellular network that involves a macrocell tier (i.e., BS-to-device communications) and a device tier (i.e., device-to-device communications). Device terminal relaying makes it possible for devices in a network to function as transmission relays for each other and realize a massive ad hoc mesh network. This is obviously a dramatic departure from the conventional cellular architecture and brings unique technical challenges. In such a two-tier cellular system, since the user data is routed through other users? devices, security must be maintained for privacy. To ensure minimal impact on the performance of existing macrocell BSs, the two-tier network needs to be designed with smart interference management strategies and appropriate resource allocation schemes. Furthermore, novel pricing models should be designed to tempt devices to participate in this type of communication. Our article provides an overview of these major challenges in two-tier networks and proposes some pricing schemes for different types of device relaying.