User association and load balancing in wireless heterogeneous networks

• Grant number: 13/07064-4
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: December 01, 2013
• End date: November 30, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computer Systems
• Principal Investigator: Juliana Freitag Borin
• Grantee: Juliana Freitag Borin
• Host Institution: Instituto de Computação (IC). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The increasing demand for mobile access to multimedia services on the Internet has overwhelmed wireless networks with traffic. The Long Term Evolution Advanced technology (LTE-A), one of the main candidates for 4G, allows the deployment of heterogeneous networks, where various classes of low power base stations (such as pico and femto base stations) are underlaid in a macro-cellular network. HetNets can be used to extend coverage to indoor areas where outdoor signals do not reach well, or to add network capacity in areas with a high density of users. One of the main challenges in HetNets is properly associating users with serving base stations. In homogeneous networks, a userusually associates herself to the base station that offers the best signal strength. However, such a rule does not work well in HetNets, since the power disparity between the macro and pico base stations may cause most of the users to associate themselves to the macro base station. Most of the related work considers only physical layer parameters to solve the user association problem, however, to guarantee users satisfaction, it is of paramount importance toconsider their demands and to balance the load among the cells in order to avoid that some base stations get overloaded. Few works deal jointly with user association and load balancing and all of them focus only on the downlink channel. This project aims to propose algorithms for user association in HetNets which promote load balancing among cells for both downlink and uplink directions. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

HIRATA, ALEXANDRE T.; XAVIER, EDUARDO C.; BONIN, JULIANA F.; IEEE. Optimal and Heuristic Decision Strategies for Load Balancing and User Association on HetNets. 2018 IEEE SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTERS AND COMMUNICATIONS (ISCC), v. N/A, p. 6-pg., 2018-01-01. (13/07064-4)