TITLE:
Balancing D2D Communication Relayed Traffic Offloading in Multi-Tier HetNets
AUTHORS:
Allafi Omran, Michel Kadoch
KEYWORDS:
Device-to-Device Communications, Heterogeneous Networks, Kuhn-Munkres (K-M) Method, Load Balancing, Small Cell
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Communications, Network and System Sciences,
Vol.12 No.6,
June
28,
2019
ABSTRACT: In Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets), Integrating Device-to-Device communication (D2D) techniques presents as a promising solution for improving system performance by offloading traffic from heavily loaded macro cell (MC) to small cells (SCs). For instance, D2D can be used to offload traffic from heavily-loaded cells to light-loaded small cells. However, offloading new users may result in an unfair load distribution among small cells and consequently may affect the quality of service of some users. To achieve better performance and reduce blocking probability load balancing among small cells should be considered when we offload traffic from macro to small cells. In this paper, we consider a centralized offloaded relay selection scheme, in which a cellular provider can decide whether users can assist each other to relay their traffic to small cells. We propose a joint user-relay selection with dynamic load balancing scheme based on D2D communications using the Kuhn-Munkres (K-M) method. The offloading process considers the load from MC to SCs and among SCs. Compared to previous works, our simulation results show that the proposed scheme increases the number of admitted users in the system, and achieves a higher load balancing fairness index among small cells. Also, our scheme achieves a higher rate fairness index among users by adjusting the signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) threshold.