The joint user association and spectrum allocation problem is studied for multi-tier heterogeneous networks (HetNets) in both downlink and uplink in the interference-limited regime. Users are associated with base-stations (BSs) based on the biased downlink received power. Spectrum is either shared or orthogonally partitioned among the tiers. This paper models the placement of BSs in different tiers as spatial point processes and adopts stochastic geometry to derive the theoretical mean proportionally fair utility of the network based on the coverage rate. By formulating and solving the network utility maximization problem, the optimal user association bias factors and spectrum partition ratios are analytically obtained for the multi-tier network. The resulting analysis reveals that the downlink and uplink user associations do not have to be symmetric. For uplink under spectrum sharing, if all tiers have the same target signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), distance-based user association is shown to be optimal under a variety of path loss and power control settings. For both downlink and uplink, under orthogonal spectrum partition, it is shown that the optimal proportion of spectrum allocated to each tier should match the proportion of users associated with that tier. Simulations validate the analytical results. Under typical system parameters, simulation results suggest that spectrum partition performs better for downlink in terms of utility, while spectrum sharing performs better for uplink with power control.
For the user association problem, one of the prior approaches in the literature involves heuristic greedy search, i.e., adding users that improve a certain metric to the BS in a greedy fashion, as in @cite_5 and @cite_11 for single-tier networks and multi-tier HetNets, respectively. Another prior approach involves a utility maximization framework and pricing-based association methods, see @cite_7 for single-tier networks and @cite_37 @cite_8 for HetNets. In @cite_16 @cite_20 , the association problem is jointly considered with resource allocation using the game theoretical approach. These solutions are dynamic and require real-time computations based on channel and topology realization. The cell range expansion scheme @cite_18 @cite_13 considered in this paper is semi-static and simple to implement. However, the bias factors are usually empirically determined through system-level performance evaluation @cite_18 . The effect of biased offloading has been investigated for multi-tier HetNets in @cite_30 @cite_0 under random topology, where the optimal bias in terms of SIR and rate coverage is determined through numerical evaluation. In our work, the optimal bias factor of each tier are derived through analytical network utility optimization.
@cite_30 @cite_37 @cite_18 @cite_7 @cite_8 @cite_0 @cite_5 @cite_16 @cite_13 @cite_20 @cite_11
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The joint spectrum partition and user association problem for multi-tier heterogeneous networks is studied in this paper, where disjoint spectrums are allocated among tiers and users are associated with each tier with a biased received power. The random placement of base-stations (BSs) of different tiers are modeled using stochastic geometry, which accounts for their practical deployment and also makes analysis tractable. We derive an upper bound of the average user proportional fair utility based on the user coverage rate, from which we formulate a network utility maximization problem. The optimization of the proposed utility bound shows that the optimal spectrum allocation for each BS tier matches the average proportion of users associated with that tier. The solution to the optimization problem also provides closed-form expressions for the optimal user associated bias factors. Compared to system-level optimization solutions based on specific network topology and channel realization, our offline analytical approach offers deployment insights. Simulation results demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach. This paper analyzes the impact of user mobility in multi-tier heterogeneous networks. We begin by obtaining the handoff rate for a mobile user in an irregular cellular network with the access point locations modeled as a homogeneous Poisson point process. The received signal-to-interference-ratio (SIR) distribution along with a chosen SIR threshold is then used to obtain the probability of coverage. To capture potential connection failures due to mobility, we assume that a fraction of handoffs result in such failures. Considering a multi-tier network with orthogonal spectrum allocation among tiers and the maximum biased average received power as the tier association metric, we derive the probability of coverage for two cases: 1) the user is stationary (i.e., handoffs do not occur, or the system is not sensitive to handoffs); 2) the user is mobile, and the system is sensitive to handoffs. We derive the optimal bias factors to maximize the coverage. We show that when the user is mobile, and the network is sensitive to handoffs, both the optimum tier association and the probability of coverage depend on the user's speed; a speed-dependent bias factor can then adjust the tier association to effectively improve the coverage, and hence system performance, in a fully-loaded network. For a wireless multi-tier heterogeneous network with orthogonal spectrum allocation across tiers, we optimize the association probability and the fraction of spectrum allocated to each tier so as to maximize rate coverage. In practice, the association probability can be controlled using a biased received signal power. The optimization problem is non-convex and we are forced to explore locally optimal solutions. We make two contributions in this paper: first, we show that there exists a relation between the first derivatives of the objective function with respect to each of the optimization variables. This can be used to simplify numerical solutions to the optimization problem. Second, we explore the optimality of the intuitive solution that the fraction of spectrum allocated to each tier should be equal to the tier association probability. We show that, in this case, a closed-form solution exists. Importantly, our numerical results show that there is essentially zero performance loss. The results also illustrate the significant gains possible by jointly optimizing the user association and the resource allocation. This paper considers the joint optimization of frequency reuse and base-station (BS) bias for user association in downlink heterogeneous networks for load balancing and intercell interference management. To make the analysis tractable, we assume that BSs are randomly deployed as point processes in multiple tiers, where BSs in each tier have different transmission powers and spatial densities. A utility maximization framework is formulated based on the user coverage rate, which is a function of the different BS biases for user association and different frequency reuse factors across BS tiers. Compared to previous works where the bias levels are heuristically determined and full reuse is adopted, we quantitatively compute the optimal user association bias and obtain the closed-form solution of the optimal frequency reuse. Interestingly, we find that the optimal bias and the optimal reuse factor of each BS tier have an inversely proportional relationship. Further, we also propose an iterative method for optimizing these two factors. In contrast to system-level optimization solutions based on specific channel realization and network topology, our approach is off-line and is useful for deriving deployment insights. Numerical results show that optimizing user association and frequency reuse for multi-tier heterogeneous networks can effectively improve cell-edge user rate performance and utility.