Traffic-aware resource sharing in ultra-dense small cell networks

Abstract

With the expected increase in data traffic by multiple hundred-folds in the coming years, future networks are likely to experience large densification of small cells, with or without detailed network planning, in order to increase the network capacity. The biggest challenge this densification brings along is very high interference. Thus there is an urgent need to develop strategies that could help in the first place to avoid such large interference in small cell clusters. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme for dynamic radio resource management in the downlink for a cluster of heavily overlapped small cells. The scheme proposes the use of jointly considering real time interference and traffic characteristics of the small cells in the cluster. It is observed that the proposed method comparing to full reuse or fractional frequency reuse, leverages the network performance in terms of mean user throughput and total number of satisfied users, achieving ≥95% of the data-rate demand, at relatively a lower scheduling overhead.