Analysis of Two-Tier LTE Network with Randomized Resource Allocation and Proactive Offloading

TL;DR

This paper evaluates a two-tier LTE network's downlink performance, focusing on resource randomization, proactive offloading, and access control, demonstrating optimized strategies for different network congestion scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a novel proactive offloading scheme and analyzes resource randomization and hybrid access control in a two-tier LTE network.

Findings

Proactive offloading improves performance in congested networks.

Optimal RRM strategies vary with network congestion levels.

Hybrid femto access performs nearly as well as open access.

Abstract

The heterogeneity in cellular networks that comprise multiple base stations types imposes new challenges in network planning and deployment. The Radio Resource Management (RRM) techniques, such as dynamic sharing of the available resources and advanced user association strategies determine the overall network capacity and the network/spectrum efficiency. This paper evaluates the downlink performance of a two-tier heterogeneous LTE network (consisting of macro and femto tiers) in terms of rate distribution, i.e. the percentage of users that achieve certain rate in the system. The paper specifically addresses: (1) the femto tier RRM by randomization of the allocated resources; (2) the user association process by introducing novel proactive offloading scheme and (3) femto tier access control. System level simulation results show that an optimal RRM strategy can be designed for different scenarios (e.g. congested and uncongested networks). The proposed proactive offloading scheme in the association phase improves the performance of congested networks by efficiently utilizing the available femto tier resources. Finally, the introduced hybrid access in femto tier is shown to perform nearly identical as the open access.