A New Cell Association Scheme In Heterogeneous Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel cell association scheme for heterogeneous networks that considers SINR and BS traffic load, improving data rates and spectral efficiency over existing schemes.

Contribution

The paper introduces a new cell association scheme based on joint SINR and load considerations, with analytical modeling and performance comparison.

Findings

Outperforms the cell range expansion scheme.

Allocating small, high-density BSs enhances spectral efficiency.

Proposed scheme increases average MU data rate.

Abstract

Cell association scheme determines which base station (BS) and mobile user (MU) should be associated with and also plays a significant role in determining the average data rate a MU can achieve in heterogeneous networks. However, the explosion of digital devices and the scarcity of spectra collectively force us to carefully re-design cell association scheme which was kind of taken for granted before. To address this, we develop a new cell association scheme in heterogeneous networks based on joint consideration of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) which a MU experiences and the traffic load of candidate BSs1. MUs and BSs in each tier are modeled as several independent Poisson point processes (PPPs) and all channels experience independently and identically distributed ( i.i.d.) Rayleigh fading. Data rate ratio and traffic load ratio distributions are derived to obtain the tier association probability and the average ergodic MU data rate. Through numerical results, We find that our proposed cell association scheme outperforms cell range expansion (CRE) association scheme. Moreover, results indicate that allocating small sized and high-density BSs will improve spectral efficiency if using our proposed cell association scheme in heterogeneous networks.