Rate-based Cell Range Expansion for mmWave Massive MIMO Enabled Two-Tier HetNets

Abstract

This paper presents a Rate-based Cell Range Expansion (CRE) for mmWave massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) enabled two-tier heterogeneous networks (Het-Nets) where macro base stations (BSs) operate at sub-6 GHz and small BSs operate at mmWave band. We design a new user association scheme with the consideration of disparities between macro BSs and small BSs, chiefly bandwidths combined with Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR), although conventional CRE provides a fixed Cell Selection Offset (CSO) for all user equipments (UEs). A downlink model is put forth to analyze the performance of the proposed Rate-based CRE. Our scheme consists of two parts: CRE between small cells and CRE between macro cells and small cells. We also investigate the proposed method by evaluating the average user throughput and cell edge user throughput. System-level computer simulation results such as average user throughput and 5-percentile user throughput are provided. The results confirm that the proposed method can improve the average user throughput compared with the conventional CRE scheme and maintain the cell edge user throughput for such multi-frequency cooperative networks. Thus, this scheme is an effective solution for user association in 5G mmWave HetNets.