No Arabic abstract
Heterogeneous wireless networks with small-cell deployments in licensed and unlicensed spectrum bands are a promising approach for expanding wireless connectivity and service. As a result, wireless service providers (SPs) are adding small-cells to augment their existing macro-cell deployments. This added flexibility complicates network management, in particular, service pricing and spectrum allocations across macro- and small-cells. Further, these decisions depend on the degree of competition among SPs. Restrictions on shared spectrum access imposed by regulators, such as low power constraints that lead to small-cell deployments, along with the investment cost needed to add small cells to an existing network, also impact strategic decisions and market efficiency. If the revenue generated by small-cells does not cover the investment cost, then there will be no deployment even if it increases social welfare. We study the implications of such spectrum constraints and investment costs on resource allocation and pricing decisions by competitive SPs, along with the associated social welfare. Our results show that while the optimal resource allocation taking constraints and investment into account can be uniquely determined, adding those features with strategic SPs can have a substantial effect on the equilibrium market structure.
Small cells deployed in licensed spectrum and unlicensed access via WiFi provide different ways of expanding wireless services to low mobility users. That reduces the demand for conventional macro-cellular networks, which are better suited for wide-area mobile coverage. The mix of these technologies seen in practice depends in part on the decisions made by wireless service providers that seek to maximize revenue, and allocations of licensed and unlicensed spectrum by regulators. To understand these interactions we present a model in which a service provider allocates available licensed spectrum across two separate bands, one for macro- and one for small-cells, in order to serve two types of users: mobile and fixed. We assume a service model in which the providers can charge a (different) price per unit rate for each type of service (macro- or small-cell); unlicensed access is free. With this setup we study how the addition of unlicensed spectrum affects prices and the optimal allocation of bandwidth across macro-/small-cells. We also characterize the optimal fraction of unlicensed spectrum when new bandwidth becomes available.
We propose and experimentally demonstrate a bandwidth allocation method based on the comparative advantage of spectral efficiency among users in a multi-tone small-cell radio access system with frequency-selective fading channels. The method allocates frequency resources by ranking the comparative advantage of the spectrum measured at the receivers ends. It improves the overall spectral efficiency of the access system with low implementation complexity and independently of power loading. In a two-user wireless transmission experiment, we observe up to 23.1% average capacity improvement by using the proposed method.
Joint channel and rate allocation with power minimization in orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) has attracted extensive attention. Most of the research has dealt with the development of sub-optimal but low-complexity algorithms. In this paper, the contributions comprise new insights from revisiting tractability aspects of computing optimum. Previous complexity analyses have been limited by assumptions of fixed power on each subcarrier, or power-rate functions that locally grow arbitrarily fast. The analysis under the former assumption does not generalize to problem tractability with variable power, whereas the latter assumption prohibits the result from being applicable to well-behaved power-rate functions. As the first contribution, we overcome the previous limitations by rigorously proving the problems NP-hardness for the representative logarithmic rate function. Next, we extend the proof to reach a much stronger result, namely that the problem remains NP-hard, even if the channels allocated to each user is restricted to a consecutive block with given size. We also prove that, under these restrictions, there is a special case with polynomial-time tractability. Then, we treat the problem class where the channels can be partitioned into an arbitrarily large but constant number of groups, each having uniform gain for every individual user. For this problem class, we present a polynomial-time algorithm and prove optimality guarantee. In addition, we prove that the recognition of this class is polynomial-time solvable.
In this paper, for the first time, we analytically prove that the uplink (UL) inter-cell interference in frequency division multiple access (FDMA) small cell networks (SCNs) can be well approximated by a lognormal distribution under a certain condition. The lognormal approximation is vital because it allows tractable network performance analysis with closed-form expressions. The derived condition, under which the lognormal approximation applies, does not pose particular requirements on the shapes/sizes of user equipment (UE) distribution areas as in previous works. Instead, our results show that if a path loss related random variable (RV) associated with the UE distribution area, has a low ratio of the 3rd absolute moment to the variance, the lognormal approximation will hold. Analytical and simulation results show that the derived condition can be readily satisfied in future dense/ultra-dense SCNs, indicating that our conclusions are very useful for network performance analysis of the 5th generation (5G) systems with more general cell deployment beyond the widely used Poisson deployment.
In this paper, we analytically derive an upper bound on the error in approximating the uplink (UL) single-cell interference by a lognormal distribution in frequency division multiple access (FDMA) small cell networks (SCNs). Such an upper bound is measured by the Kolmogorov Smirnov (KS) distance between the actual cumulative density function (CDF) and the approximate CDF. The lognormal approximation is important because it allows tractable network performance analysis. Our results are more general than the existing works in the sense that we do not pose any requirement on (i) the shape and/or size of cell coverage areas, (ii) the uniformity of user equipment (UE) distribution, and (iii) the type of multi-path fading. Based on our results, we propose a new framework to directly and analytically investigate a complex network with practical deployment of multiple BSs placed at irregular locations, using a power lognormal approximation of the aggregate UL interference. The proposed network performance analysis is particularly useful for the 5th generation (5G) systems with general cell deployment and UE distribution.