On Base Station Coordination in Cache- and Energy Harvesting-Enabled HetNets: A Stochastic Geometry Study

Abstract

In this paper, we study the performance of base station (BS) coordination in heterogeneous networks (HetNets) with cache-enabled and renewable energy-powered small cell BSs (SBSs). Macrocell base stations (MBSs) provide basic coverage, while the SBSs, powered by harvested energy, conduct content-aware coordinated transmission to provide high data rate and further improve the network coverage. Specifically, a joint transmission strategy is performed based on the knowledge of the energy states and the cached contents of SBSs, along with the awareness of the availability of channel resources and the average received signal strength (RSS) of the corresponding link. Stochastic geometry is applied to characterize the statistics of the cell load at MBSs and SBSs, as well as the aggregated information and interference signal strength. Then, the average user capacity for the joint transmission is obtained. Additionally, the coverage probability is derived with gamma approximation for the aggregated information and interference signal strength. Analytical results reveal that the average user capacity and coverage probability can be maximized with optimal cache size, energy harvesting rate and cooperative RSS threshold. Finally, extensive numerical and simulation results are provided.