Full Duplex Emulation via Spatial Separation of Half Duplex Nodes in a Planar Cellular Network

TL;DR

This paper investigates a scheme called CoMPflex, which uses spatially separated half-duplex base stations to emulate full duplex communication, showing potential benefits in reliability and network densification.

Contribution

The paper introduces and analyzes CoMPflex, a novel scheme for emulating full duplex operation through spatial separation of half-duplex base stations in cellular networks.

Findings

CoMPflex reduces the distance between base stations and mobile stations.

It increases the separation between interfering mobile stations.

CoMPflex improves communication reliability over traditional full duplex base stations.

Abstract

A Full Duplex Base Station (FD-BS) can be used to serve simultaneously two Half-Duplex (HD) Mobile Stations (MSs), one working in the uplink and one in the downlink, respectively. The same functionality can be realized by having two interconnected and spatially separated Half Duplex Base Stations (HD-BSs), which is a scheme termed \emph{CoMPflex} (CoMP for In-Band Wireless Full Duplex). A FD-BS can be seen as a special case of CoMPflex with separation distance zero. In this paper we study the performance of CoMPflex in a two-dimensional cellular scenario using stochastic geometry and compare it to the one achieved by FD-BSs. By deriving the Cumulative Distribution Functions, we show that CoMPflex brings BSs closer to the MSs they are serving, while increasing the distance between a MS and interfering MSs. Furthermore, the results show that CoMPflex brings benefits over FD-BS in terms of communication reliability. Following the trend of wireless network densification, CoMPflex can be regarded as a method with a great potential to effectively use the dense HD deployments.