In this paper, we investigate the coverage performance and energy efficiency of multi-tier heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets) which are composed of macrocells and different types of small cells, i.e., picocells and femtocells. By virtue of stochastic geometry tools, we model the multi-tier HetNets based on a Poisson point process (PPP) and analyze the Signal to Interference Ratio (SIR) via studying the cumulative interference from pico-tier and femto-tier. We then derive the analytical expressions of coverage probabilities in order to evaluate coverage performance in different tiers and investigate how it varies with the small cells’ deployment density. By taking the fairness and user experience into consideration, we propose a disjoint channel allocation scheme and derive the system channel throughput for various tiers. Further, we formulate the energy efficiency optimization problem for multi-tier HetNets in terms of throughput performance and resource allocation fairness. To solve this problem, we devise a linear programming based approach to obtain the available area of the feasible solutions. System-level simulations demonstrate that the small cells’ deployment density has a significant effect on the coverage performance and energy efficiency. Simulation results also reveal that there exits an optimal small cell base station (SBS) density ratio between pico-tier and femto-tier which can be applied to maximize the energy efficiency and at the same time enhance the system performance. Our findings provide guidance for the design of multi-tier HetNets for improving the coverage performance as well as the energy efficiency.

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a novel inter-cell handover approach from a new perspective in dense Heterogeneous and Small Cell Networks (HetSNets). We first devise a cell selection mechanism to choose a proper candidate small cell for the UEs that tend to implement inter-small cell handover (ICH). By exploiting the property of a typical non-concentric circle, i.e., circle of Apollonius, we then propose a novel analytical method for modeling inter-cell handover regions and present mathematical derivation to prove that the inter-small cell handover issues fit the property of the circle of Apollonius. We design an inter-cell handover algorithm (ICHA) by means of our proposed handover model to dynamically configure hysteresis margin and properly implement handover decision in terms of UE's mobility. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ICHA yields lower call drop rate and radio link failure rate than the conventional methods and hence achieve high Handover Performance Indicator (HPI). Keywords：Heterogeneous and Small cell Networks (HetSNets); Inter-Small cell Handover; Circle of Apollonius.

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