Distance‐based cell range extension and almost blank sub‐frame for load balancing and interference mitigation in 5G and beyond heterogeneous networks

Abstract

The goal of deploying LTE‐Advanced heterogeneous networks is to meet the growing need for Quality of Service (QoS), high data rates, and more coverage. Load balancing is one of the biggest problems, especially when User Equipment (UE) uses received signal strength to connect to different transmission power network tiers. Spectrum for small cells has not been used to its full potential. While all the cells are using the same frequency spectrum and the small cells overlap the Macro Cells, preventing interference is another big problem. The proposed Cell Range Extension (CRE) and Almost Blank Sub‐frame (ABS) provides a solution to overcome these challenges. The proposed ABS in this paper is novel because it is a partial muting one rather than the full muting ABS in recent research studies. In addition, the cell association method is by distance rather than conventional Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP). CRE‐ABS has been applied simultaneously to solve both load balancing and interference. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves substantial throughput and Jain's Fairness Index (JFI).

Ant colony optimization-based solution to optimize load balancing and throughput for 5G and beyond heterogeneous networks

“…( Constraint (12) ensures that each user is linked with just one base station, implying that a Coordinated Multipoint Transmission (CoMP) is not taken into account. The following constraint (13) safeguards that the RBs utilized by the ith UE do not exceed the total RBs accessible at the jth base station.…”

“…In the realm of mobile cellular networks, the term 'load' encompasses various interpretations, often linked to the count of UEs connected to a base station (BS). When the aggregate number of resource blocks (RBs) allocated to users remains constant, the traffic load encountered by the base station corresponds directly to the number of attached UEs [11,12]. In 5G and beyond HetNets, load balancing becomes more critical due to the diverse range of devices, services, and applications these networks support.…”