Sensors, Vol. 19, Pages 1412: Online Distributed User Association for Heterogeneous Radio Access Network (Sensors)

Future-generation radio access networks (RAN) are projected to fulfill the diverse requirements of user equipment (UE) by adopting a heterogeneous network (HetNet) environment. Necessary integration of different radio access technologies (RAT), such as 2G, 3G, 4G, wireless local area network (WLAN), and visible light communication (VLC) is inevitable. Moreover, UEs equipped with diverse requirements will be capable of accessing some or all the RATs. The complex HetNet environment with diverse requirements of UEs will present many challenges. The HetNet is likely to suffer severely from load imbalance among the base stations (BSs) from inheriting the traditional user association scheme such as max-SINR (signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio)/max-RSSI (received signal strength indicator), unless some sophisticated schemes are invented. In this paper, a novel scheme is devised for a joint-user association for load balancing, where BSs are densely deployed and UEs typically have a certain degree of mobility. Unlike most of the present works, a dynamic network is considered where the position and channel condition of the UEs are not fixed. We develop two complex and distributed association schemes based on probability and d-choices, while carefully considering both loads of the BSs and SINR experienced by the UEs. Numerical results validate the efficiency of the proposed schemes by showing a received data-rate fairness among UEs and an improvement in the UE’s minimum received data rate.