On Energy Efficiency of the Nearest-Neighbor Cooperative Communication in Heterogeneous Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a nearest-neighbor cooperation scheme in heterogeneous cellular networks that leverages short-range communication between mobile stations to enhance uplink energy efficiency, supported by stochastic geometry analysis.

Contribution

It proposes a novel cooperation scheme utilizing nearest-neighbor short-range communication and provides an energy efficiency analysis in PPP-modeled networks.

Findings

NNCC significantly improves energy efficiency over non-cooperative methods.

The scheme effectively exploits short-range communication for uplink data exchange.

Numerical results confirm the energy savings in Rayleigh fading channels.

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a two-dimensional heterogeneous cellular network scenario consisting of one base station (BS) and some mobile stations (MSs) whose locations follow a Poisson point process (PPP). The MSs are equipped with multiple radio access interfaces including a cellular access interface and at least one short-range communication interface. We propose a nearest-neighbor cooperation communication (NNCC) scheme by exploiting the short-range communication between a MS and its nearest neighbor to collaborate on their uplink transmissions. In the proposed cooperation scheme, a MS and its nearest neighbor first exchange data by the short-range communication. Upon successful decoding of the data from each other, they proceed to send their own data, as well as the data received from the other to the BS respectively in orthogonal time slots. The energy efficiency analysis for the proposed scheme is presented based on the characteristics of the PPP and the Rayleigh fading channel. Numerical results show that the NNCC scheme significantly improves the energy efficiency compared to the conventional non-cooperative uplink transmissions.