Radio resource management techniques for multi-tier cellular wireless networks

There is a prolific increase in the penetration of user devices such as smartphones and tablets. In addition, user expectations for higher Quality of Service (QoS), enhanced data rates and lower latencies are relentless. In this context, network densification through the dense deployment of small cell networks, underlaying the currently existing macrocell networks, is the most appealing approach to handle the aforementioned requirements. Small cell networks are capable of reusing the spectrum locally and providing most of the capacity while macrocell networks provide a blanket coverage for mobile user equipment (UEs). However, such setup imposes a lot of issues, among which, co-tier and cross-tier interference are the most challenging. To handle co-tier interference, I have proposed a semi-distributed (hierarchical) interference management scheme based on joint clustering and resource allocation (RA) for small cells. I have formulated the problem as a Mixed Integer Non-Linear Program (MINLP), whose solution was obtained by dividing the problem into two subproblems, where the related tasks were shared between the Femto Gateway (FGW) and small cells. As for cross-tier interference, I have formulated RA problems for both the macrocell and small cells as optimization problems. In particular, I have introduced the idea of “Tier-Awareness” and studied the impact of the different RA policies in the macrocell tier on the small cells performance. I have shown that the RA policy in one tier should be carefully selected. In addition, I have formulated the RA problem for small cells as an optimization problem with an objective function that accounts for both RA and admission control (AC). Finally, I have studied cloud radio access network (C-RAN) of small cells which has been considered as a typical realization of a mobile network which is capable of supporting soft and green technologies in Fifth Generation (5G) networks, as well as a platform for the practical implementation of network multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission concepts.