On/off macrocells and load balancing in heterogeneous cellular networks

摘要: The rate distribution in heterogeneous networks (HetNets) greatly benefits from load balancing, by which mobile users are pushed onto lightly-loaded small cells despite the resulting loss SINR. This offloading can be made more aggressive and robust if macrocells leave a fraction of time/frequency resource blank, reduces interference to offloaded users. We investigate joint optimization this technique - referred 3GPP as enhanced intercell coordination (eICIC) via almost blank subframes (ABSs) with paper. Although cell association (BR) problem is nominally combinatorial, allowing associate multiple base stations (BSs), becomes convex, upper bounds performance versus binary association. show both theoretically through simulation that optimal solution relaxed still results an mostly binary. differs significantly when macrocell on or off; particular much left macro BSs. Further, we observe jointly optimizing BR important. gain for edge (the worst 3–10%) very large order 5–10x naive strategy without blanking.