Association of Networked Flying Platforms with Small Cells for Network Centric 5G+ C-RAN

TL;DR

This paper proposes using network flying platforms as fronthaul hubs to connect small cells in 5G+ networks, formulating an association problem and designing greedy algorithms to optimize network coverage and performance.

Contribution

It introduces a novel NFP-based fronthaul solution for dense 5G+ small cell networks and develops efficient algorithms for optimal NFP-SC association.

Findings

Proposed greedy algorithms outperform exhaustive search.

NFP-based fronthaul improves network scalability.

System maximizes associated small cells without bias.

Abstract

5G+ systems expect enhancement in data rate and coverage area under limited power constraint. Such requirements can be fulfilled by the densification of small cells (SCs). However, a major challenge is the management of fronthaul links connected with an ultra dense network of SCs. A cost effective and scalable idea of using network flying platforms (NFPs) is employed here, where the NFPs are used as fronthaul hubs that connect the SCs to the core network. The association problem of NFPs and SCs is formulated considering a number of practical constraints such as backhaul data rate limit, maximum supported links and bandwidth by NFPs and quality of service requirement of the system. The network centric case of the system is considered that aims to maximize the number of associated SCs without any biasing, i.e., no preference for high priority SCs. Then, two new efficient greedy algorithms are designed to solve the presented association problem. Numerical results show a favorable performance of our proposed methods in comparison to exhaustive search.