Analysis of Two-Tier LTE Network with Randomized Resource Allocation and Proactive Offloading

Abstract

The heterogeneity in cellular networks that comprise multiple base stations’ types imposes new challenges in network planning and deployment. The Radio Resource Management (RRM) techniques, such as dynamic sharing of the available resources and advanced user association strategies determine the overall network capacity and efficiency. This paper evaluates the downlink performance of a two-tier heterogeneous LTE network (consisting of macro and femto tiers) in terms of rate distribution, i.e. the percentage of users that achieve certain rate in the system. The paper specifically addresses the femto tier RRM by randomization of the allocated resources (1) and the user association process by introducing novel proactive offloading scheme (2). System level simulation results show that the proposed proactive offloading scheme in the association phase improves the performance of congested networks by efficiently utilizing the available femto tier resources.