The Mean Interference-to-Signal Ratio and its Key Role in Cellular and Amorphous Networks

TL;DR

This paper presents a versatile analytical framework based on the mean interference-to-signal ratio to approximate SIR distribution in cellular networks, unifying recent results and aiding future network design.

Contribution

It introduces a simple analytical approach using the mean interference-to-signal ratio to approximate SIR distributions, applicable to various network architectures including amorphous networks.

Findings

The framework accurately approximates SIR distributions across different network scenarios.

It unifies and simplifies analysis of diverse network architectures and transmission schemes.

The approach facilitates comparison and design of future cellular and amorphous networks.

Abstract

We introduce a simple yet powerful and versatile analytical framework to approximate the SIR distribution in the downlink of cellular systems. It is based on the mean interference-to-signal ratio and yields the horizontal gap (SIR gain) between the SIR distribution in question and a reference SIR distribution. As applications, we determine the SIR gain for base station silencing, cooperation, and lattice deployment over a baseline architecture that is based on a Poisson deployment of base stations and strongest-base station association. The applications demonstrate that the proposed approach unifies several recent results and provides a convenient framework for the analysis and comparison of future network architectures and transmission schemes, including amorphous networks where a user is served by multiple base stations and, consequently, (hard) cell association becomes obsolete.