Inter-cell Resource Allocation Research Articles

QoS-Guaranteed Radio Resource Management in LTE-A Co-Channel Networks with Dual Connectivity

Dual connectivity (DC) was first proposed in 3GPP Release 12 which allows one piece of user equipment (UE) to connect to two base stations in heterogeneous networks (HetNet) at the same time, to increase the flexibility of resource utilization. DC has been further extended to multiple connectivity in 5G New Radio (NR). On the other hand, different UE tends to have different bandwidth requirements. Thus, in DC, one of the challenging issues is how to integrate resources from two base stations to enhance the quality of service (QoS) as well as the data transfer rate of each UE. In this paper, we proposed novel resource management mechanisms to improve the QoS of UE in the co-channel dual connectivity network. In terms of resource allocation, we designed the (MTS) which, in principle, allocates a resource block to the UE with the best channel quality while considering the issues of intercell resource allocation and the QoS requirement of each UE. In order to balance the load of different cells, we designed a novel cell selection scheme based on the HetNet Congestion Indicator (HCI) which considers not only the signal quality of UE but also the remaining resources of each base station. To improve the QoS of cell edge UE, cell range expansion (CRE) and the Almost Blank Subframe (ABS) were proposed in 3GPP. In this paper, based on Q-learning, we designed an adaptive mechanism which dynamically adjusts the ABS ratio according to the network condition to improve resource utilization. Our simulation results showed that our MTS scheduler was able to achieve a 31.44% higher data rate than the Proportional Fairness Scheduler; our HCI cell selection scheme yielded a 2.98% higher data rate than the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) cell selection scheme; the QoS satisfaction rate of our Q-learning dynamic ABS scheme was 4.06% higher than that of the Static ABS scheme. Finally, for the cell edge users who often suffer poor data transfer rate, by integrating the mechanisms of DC, CRE, and ABS, our experimental results showed that the QoS satisfaction ratio of cell edge UEs could be improved by 10.76% as compared to the single connectivity and no ABS situation.

Spectrum Sharing and Inter Cell Interference Mitigation in Wireless Cellular Networks

Objective: Spectrum shortage and Inter Cell Interference (ICI) are two factors which limits the performance of wireless cellular networks. Methods/Analysis: One of the popular methods is Soft Frequency Reuse which effectively controls the spectrum management and reduces the ICI for wireless networks. In conventional static Soft Frequency Reuse (SFR) scheme, transmission power in cell and allocation of subcarriers are fixed during the system deployment, which affects the performance of system. Findings: This paper focuses Intercell Resource Allocation algorithm, which is dynamic in nature and optimizes both subcarrier and transmission power for cellular network. Novelty/Improvement: Intercell Resource Allocation algorithm result in greater improvement in data rate and system capacity.

On the efficient utilization of radio resources in extremely dense wireless networks

The emergence of popular wireless technologies such as LTE and WiFi, and the exponential growth in the usage of these technologies, has led to extremely dense wireless networks. There are many proposals for coping with such densification. In particular, we evaluate the compound effect of inter-cell interference schemes and spectrum efficient intra-cell relay techniques, which have been individually proposed recently as separate solutions. We provide a jointly coordinated intracell and inter-cell resource allocation mechanism that opportunistically exploits network density as a resource. We show that intracell opportunistic relay, based on WiFi communications, reduces the complexity of Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC) and boosts the efficiency of ICIC in LTE. The superiority of the proposed solution to the legacy cellular network operation is proven via simulations.

Cooperative spectrum allocation with QoS support in cognitive cooperative vehicular ad hoc networks

To solve the contradiction between the increasing demand of diverse vehicular wireless applications and the shortage of spectrum resource, a novel cognitive cooperative vehicular ad-hoc network (CC-VANET) framework is proposed in this paper. Firstly, we develop an adaptive cognitive spectrum sensing (ACSS) mechanism which can help to trigger and adjust the spectrum sensing window according to network traffic load status and communication quality. And then, Generalized Nash Bargaining Solution (GNBS), which can achieve a good tradeoff between efficiency and weighted fairness, is proposed to formulate the asymmetric inter-cell resource allocation. Finally, GNBS-Safety (GNBS-S) scheme is developed to enhance the Quality of Service (QoS) of safety applications, especially in the heavy load status, where the bandwidth demanded and supplied cannot be matched well. Furthermore, the primary user activity (PUA) which can cause rate loss to secondary users, is also considered to alleviate its influence to fairness. Simulation results indicate that the proposed CC-VANET scheme can greatly improve the spectrum efficiency and reduce the transmission delay and packet loss rate on the heavy contention status. And GNBS spectrum allocation scheme outperforms both the Max-min and Max-rate schemes, and can enhance the communication reliability of safety service considerably in CC-VANET.

Spectrum-Aware Mobility Management in Cognitive Radio Cellular Networks

Cognitive radio (CR) networks have been proposed as a solution to both spectrum inefficiency and spectrum scarcity problems. However, they face several challenges based on the fluctuating nature of the available spectrum, making it more difficult to support seamless communications, especially in CR cellular networks. In this paper, a spectrum-aware mobility management scheme is proposed for CR cellular networks. First, a novel network architecture is introduced to mitigate heterogeneous spectrum availability. Based on this architecture, a unified mobility management framework is developed to support diverse mobility events in CR networks, which consists of spectrum mobility management, user mobility management, and intercell resource allocation. The spectrum mobility management scheme determines a target cell and spectrum band for CR users adaptively dependent on time-varying spectrum opportunities, leading to increase in cell capacity. In the user mobility management scheme, a mobile user selects a proper handoff mechanism so as to minimize a switching latency at the cell boundary by considering spatially heterogeneous spectrum availability. Intercell resource allocation helps to improve the performance of both mobility management schemes by efficiently sharing spectrum resources with multiple cells. Simulation results show that the proposed method can achieve better performance than conventional handoff schemes in terms of both cell capacity as well as mobility support in communications.

A minimum data-rate guaranteed resource allocation with low signaling overhead in multi-cell OFDMA systems

In this paper, we investigate how to do resource allocation to guarantee a minimum user data rate at low signaling overhead in multi-cell orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) wireless systems. We devise dynamic resource allocation (DRA) algorithms that can minimize the QoS violation ratio (i.e., the ratio of the number of users who fail to get the requested data rate to the total number of users in the overall network). We assume an OFDMA system that allows dynamic control of frequency reuse factor (FRF) of each sub-carrier. The proposed DRA algorithms determine the FRFs of the sub-carriers and allocate them to the users adaptively based on inter-cell interference and load distribution. In order to reduce the signaling overhead, we adopt a hierarchical resource allocation architecture which divides the resource allocation decision into the inter-cell coordinator (ICC) and the base station (BS) levels. We limit the information available at the ICC only to the load of each cell, that is, the total number of sub-carriers required for supporting the data rate requirement of all the users. We then present the DRA with limited coordination (DRA-LC) algorithm where the ICC performs load-adaptive inter-cell resource allocation with the limited information while the BS performs intra-cell resource allocation with full information about its own cell. For performance comparison, we design a centralized algorithm called DRA with full coordination (DRA-FC). Simulation results reveal that the DRA-LC algorithm can perform close to the DRA-FC algorithm at very low signaling overhead. In addition, it turns out to improve the QoS performance of the cell-boundary users, and achieve a better fairness among neighboring cells under non-uniform load distribution.