Dramatic mobile data traffic growth has spurred a dense deployment of small cell base stations (SCBSs). Small cells enhance the spectrum efficiency and thus enlarge the capacity of mobile networks. Although SCBSs consume much less power than macro BSs (MBSs) do, the overall power consumption of a large number of SCBSs is phenomenal. As the energy harvesting technology advances, base stations (BSs) can be powered by green energy to alleviate the on-grid power consumption. For mobile networks with high BS density, traffic load balancing is critical in order to exploit the capacity of SCBSs. To fully utilize harvested energy, it is desirable to incorporate the green energy utilization as a performance metric in traffic load balancing strategies. In this paper, we have proposed a traffic load balancing framework that strives a balance between network utilities, e.g., the average traffic delivery latency, and the green energy utilization. Various properties of the proposed framework have been derived. Leveraging the software-defined radio access network architecture, the proposed scheme is implemented as a virtually distributed algorithm, which significantly reduces the communication overheads between users and BSs. The simulation results show that the proposed traffic load balancing framework enables an adjustable trade-off between the on-grid power consumption and the average traffic delivery latency, and saves a considerable amount of on-grid power, e.g., 30 , at a cost of only a small increase, e.g., 8 , of the average traffic delivery latency.
Aligning with the above procedures, various traffic load balancing algorithms have been proposed to optimize the network utilities. The most practical traffic load balancing approach is the cell range expansion (CRE) technique that biases users' receiving SINRs or data rates from some BSs to prioritize these BSs in associating with users @cite_0 . Owing to the transmit power difference between MBSs and SCBSs, a large bias is usually given to SCBSs to offload users to small cells @cite_14 . By applying CRE, a user associates with the BS from which the user receives the maximum biased SINR or data rate. Although CRE is simple, it is challenging to derive the optimal bias for BSs. Singh @cite_18 provided a comprehensive analysis on traffic load balancing using CRE in HetNet. The authors investigated the selection of the bias value and its impact on the SINR coverage and the downlink rate distribution in HetNet.
@cite_0 @cite_18 @cite_14
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In this paper we develop a tractable framework for SINR analysis in downlink heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs) with flexible cell association policies. The HCN is modeled as a multi-tier cellular network where each tier's base stations (BSs) are randomly located and have a particular transmit power, path loss exponent, spatial density, and bias towards admitting mobile users. For example, as compared to macrocells, picocells would usually have lower transmit power, higher path loss exponent (lower antennas), higher spatial density (many picocells per macrocell), and a positive bias so that macrocell users are actively encouraged to use the more lightly loaded picocells. In the present paper we implicitly assume all base stations have full queues; future work should relax this. For this model, we derive the outage probability of a typical user in the whole network or a certain tier, which is equivalently the downlink SINR cumulative distribution function. The results are accurate for all SINRs, and their expressions admit quite simple closed-forms in some plausible special cases. We also derive the average ergodic rate of the typical user, and the minimum average user throughput - the smallest value among the average user throughputs supported by one cell in each tier. We observe that neither the number of BSs or tiers changes the outage probability or average ergodic rate in an interference-limited full-loaded HCN with unbiased cell association (no biasing), and observe how biasing alters the various metrics. The rate distribution in heterogeneous networks (HetNets) greatly benefits from load balancing, by which mobile users are pushed onto lightly-loaded small cells despite the resulting loss in SINR. This offloading can be made more aggressive and robust if the macrocells leave a fraction of time frequency resource blank, which reduces the interference to the offloaded users. We investigate the joint optimization of this technique - referred to in 3GPP as enhanced intercell interference coordination (eICIC) via almost blank subframes (ABSs) - with offloading in this paper. Although the joint cell association and blank resource (BR) problem is nominally combinatorial, by allowing users to associate with multiple base stations (BSs), the problem becomes convex, and upper bounds the performance versus a binary association. We show both theoretically and through simulation that the optimal solution of the relaxed problem still results in an association that is mostly binary. The optimal association differs significantly when the macrocell is on or off; in particular the offloading can be much more aggressive when the resource is left blank by macro BSs. Further, we observe that jointly optimizing the offloading with BR is important. The rate gain for cell edge users (the worst 3-10 ) is very large - on the order of 5-10x - versus a naive association strategy without macrocell blanking. We present a novel approach for distributed load balancing in heterogeneous networks that use cell range expansion (CRE) for user association and almost blank subframe (ABS) for interference management. First, we formulate the problem as a minimization of an @math -fairness objective function with load and outage constraints. Depending on @math , different objectives in terms of network performance or fairness can be achieved. Next, we model the interactions among the base stations for load balancing as a near-potential game, in which the potential function is the @math -fairness function. The optimal pure Nash equilibrium (PNE) of the game is found by using distributed learning algorithms. We propose log-linear and binary log-linear learning algorithms for complete and partial information settings, respectively. We give a detailed proof of convergence of learning algorithms for a near-potential game. We provide sufficient conditions under which the learning algorithms converge to the optimal PNE. By running extensive simulations, we show that the proposed algorithms converge within few hundreds of iterations. The convergence speed in the case of partial information setting is comparable to that of the complete information setting. Finally, we show that outage can be controlled and a better load balancing can be achieved by introducing ABS. For an arbitrarily-located user terminal (UE) in a multi-tier heterogeneous cellular wireless network, the joint distribution of the downlink SINR at the UE from the candidate serving base stations (BSs) in the accessible tiers of the network has been derived in closed form for the cases where the candidate serving BS from each accessible tier is chosen as either the one nearest to the UE [1] or the one that is received strongest (equivalently, with maximum SINR) at the UE [2], when the locations of the BSs in the tiers are modeled by independent Poisson Point Processes, and the fading on all links is assumed independent identically distributed (iid) and Rayleigh. The actual serving BS for the UE is chosen as the nearest strongest max-SINR candidate serving BS after imposing selection bias across the tiers. The above joint distributions can be used to yield the distribution of the actual SINR at the UE (i.e., when receiving from this serving BS) when no selection bias exists across tiers. However, for the practically important case of selection bias, analytical calculation of the distribution of the actual SINR presents significant challenges. This work derives and summarizes the distribution of actual downlink SINR for all the above criteria for selection of the serving BS accounting for selection bias. We then explore some implications of these results for design and operation of a heterogeneous network.