Enabling Energy-Efficient and Backhaul-aware Next Generation Heterogeneous Networks

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School of Electrical Engineering | Doctoral thesis (article-based) | Defence date: 2015-11-20
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Date

2015

Department

Tietoliikenne- ja tietoverkkotekniikan laitos
Department of Communications and Networking

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Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

190

Series

Aalto University publication series DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS, 175/2015

Abstract

Heterogeneous networks have been firmly established as the direction in which next-generation cellular networks are evolving. We consider the dense deployment of small cells to provide enhanced capacity, while the macro cells provide wide area coverage. With the development of dual connectivity technology, deploying small cells on dedicated carriers has become an attractive option, with enhanced flexibility for splitting traffic within the network. The power consumption and latency requirements of the backhaul link are also gaining increasing prominence due to these factors. Backhaul link quality itself is expected to play an important role in influencing the deployment costs of next-generation 5G systems.  Energy efficiency as a network design paradigm is also gaining relevance due to the increasing impact cellular networks are having on the global carbon emission footprint. For operators, improving energy efficiency has the added advantage of reducing network operation expenditures. For the end-users, avoiding unnecessary draining of device battery power would improve the user experience.  In this work, we study energy efficient mechanisms for inter-frequency small cell discovery, based on mobility awareness and proximity estimation. Further, we apply generalized small cell discovery concepts in a device-to-device communication environment in order to optimize the energy consumption for device discovery. We also look at energy efficient small cell operations based on traffic characteristics and load constraints-based offloading in relation to the radio access and backhaul power consumption. In addition we study intelligent means of dist-ributing delay-critical functionalities such as Hybrid ARQ, while centralizing the computationally-intense processes in a 5G, cloud-based, centralized radio access network. Numerical evaluations done using a LTE-Advanced heterogeneous network and analytical settings indicate that significant UE and network power consumption reductions could be achieved with the considered enhancements. Using the optimized small cell operation schemes investigated in this work, reductions in network power consumption and consequent improvements in the overall energy efficiency of the network were observed. The performance of the distributed opportunistic HARQ mechanism for a centralized radio access network is compared to the optimal and static retransmission mechanisms, and the evaluated scheme is shown to perform close to the optimal mechanism, while operating with a non-ideal backhaul link.

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Supervising professor

Tirkkonen, Olav, Prof., Aalto University, Department of Communications and Networking, Finland

Thesis advisor

Maeder, Andreas, Dr., Nokia Networks, Germany
Wijting, Carl, Dr., Nokia Networks, Finland

Keywords

small cell discovery, energy efficiency, LTE-Advanced, cloud-based networks, heterogeneous networks, mobility estimation, 5G, centralized RAN

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Parts

  • [Publication 1]: A. Prasad, P. Lundén, O. Tirkkonen and C. Wijting. Energy-Efficient Flexible Inter-Frequency Scanning Mechanism for Enhanced Small Cell Discovery. In IEEE 77th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), Dresden, pp. 1–5, June 2013. DOI 10.1109/VTCSpring.2013.6692547
  • [Publication 2]: A. Prasad, P. Lundén, O. Tirkkonen and C. Wijting. Energy Efficient Small-Cell Discovery Using Received Signal Strength Based Radio Maps. In IEEE 77th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring), Dresden, pp. 1–5, June 2013. DOI 10.1109/VTCSpring.2013.6692543
  • [Publication 3]: A. Prasad, O. Tirkkonen, P. Lundén, O.N.C. Yilmaz, L. Dalsgaard, and C.Wijting. Energy Efficient Inter-Frequency Small Cell Discovery Techniques for LTE-Advanced Heterogeneous Network Deployments. IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 51, no. 5, pp. 72–81, May 2013. DOI 10.1109/MCOM.2013.6515049
  • [Publication 4]: A. Prasad, P. Lundén, O. Tirkkonen and C. Wijting. Enhanced Small Cell Discovery in Heterogeneous Networks Using Optimized RF Fingerprints. In IEEE 24th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), London, pp. 2973–2977, Sept. 2013. DOI 10.1109/PIMRC.2013.6666656
  • [Publication 5]: A. Prasad, K. Samdanis, A. Kunz, and J. Song. Energy Efficient Device Discovery for Social Cloud Applications in 3GPP LTE-Advanced Networks. In IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC), Madeira, pp. 1–6, June 2014. DOI 10.1109/ISCC.2014.6912497
  • [Publication 6]: A. Prasad, A. Maeder and C. Ng. Energy Efficient Small Cell Activation Mechanism for Heterogeneous Networks. In IEEE Globecom Workshops (GC Wkshps), Atlanta, pp. 754–759, Dec. 2013. DOI 10.1109/GLOCOMW.2013.6825079
  • [Publication 7]: A. Prasad, and A. Maeder. Backhaul-aware Energy Efficient Heterogeneous Networks with Dual Connectivity. Telecommunication Systems, vol. 59, no. 1, pp. 25–41, May 2015. DOI 10.1007/s11235-014-9893-4
  • [Publication 8]: P. Rost, and A. Prasad. Opportunistic Hybrid ARQ – Enabler of Centralized-RAN over Non-Ideal Backhaul. IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, vol. 3, no. 5, pp. 481–484, Oct. 2014. DOI 10.1109/LWC.2014.2327982

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https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-60-6467-3

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[diss] Sähkötekniikan korkeakoulu / ELEC