Distributed Association and Relaying with Fairness in Millimeter Wave Networks

TL;DR

This paper proposes a distributed association and relaying algorithm for mmWave networks that improves throughput and fairness by addressing blockage and deafness issues through load balancing and stochastic optimization.

Contribution

It introduces a novel distributed auction-based algorithm for joint association and relaying in mmWave networks, optimizing load balancing and fairness.

Findings

Significant throughput improvements demonstrated.

Enhanced fairness among clients achieved.

Algorithm converges to near-optimal solutions.

Abstract

Millimeter wave (mmWave) systems are emerging as an essential technology to enable extremely high data rate wireless communications. The main limiting factors of mmWave systems are blockage (high penetration loss) and deafness (misalignment between the beams of the transmitter and receiver). To alleviate these problems, it is imperative to incorporate efficient association and relaying between terminals and access points. Unfortunately, the existing association techniques are designed for the traditional interference-limited networks, and thus are highly suboptimal for mmWave communications due to narrow-beam operations and the resulting non-negligible interference-free behavior. This paper introduces a distributed approach that solves the joint association and relaying problem in mmWave networks considering the load balancing at access points. The problem is posed as a novel stochastic optimization problem, which is solved by distributed auction algorithms where the clients and relays act asynchronously to achieve optimal client-relay-access point association. It is shown that the algorithms provably converge to a solution that maximizes the aggregate logarithmic utility within a desired bound. Numerical results allow to quantify the performance enhancements introduced by the relays, and the substantial improvements of the network throughput and fairness among the clients by the proposed association method as compared to standard approaches. It is concluded that mmWave communications with proper association and relaying mechanisms can support extremely high data rates, connection reliability, and fairness among the clients.