Rate distribution in heterogeneous cellular networks with resource partitioning and offloading

Mobile users proactively offloaded from macro cells to small cells in heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs) encounter less congestion but higher interference. Resource partitioning protects the offloaded users from macro tier interference by muting the macro tier on certain fraction of resources and scheduling the offloaded users on those resources. However, the extent to which joint offloading and resource partitioning is needed remains unanswered. This is partly due to the lack of tractable frameworks to analyze downlink rate in the presence of such techniques. In this paper, we develop a tractable framework to analyze joint resource partitioning and offloading in a two-tier cellular network and derive the downlink rate distribution over the entire network. Each tier of base stations is modeled as a Poisson point process (PPP) where each tier differs in transmit power and deployment density. Using the developed analysis, we show that the optimal combination of load balancing and resource partitioning improves the rate of cell edge users in co-channel heterogeneous networks.