On the Traffic Offloading in Wi-Fi Supported Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Abstract

Heterogeneous small cell networks (HetSNets) are becoming an integral part of the next generation wireless networks (NGWNs), where small cell base stations (SBSs) are expected to utilize wireless-fidelity (Wi-Fi) access points (APs) and device-to-device (D2D) enabled links. HetSNets comprise several low power, low cost SBSs, D2D enabled links and Wi-Fi APs to support the existing macrocell infrastructure, decrease over the air signaling and energy consumption, and increase network capacity, data rate and coverage. This paper presents an active user dependent path loss (PL) based traffic offloading (TO) strategy for HetSNets and a comparative study on two techniques to offload the traffic from macrocell to small cell: PL and signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) based strategies. To quantify the improvements, the PL based strategy against the SIR based strategy is compared while considering various macrocell and small cell coverage areas and traffic-types. On the other hand, offloading in a dense urban setting may result in overcrowding the small cells. Therefore, hybrid traffic-type driven hybrid offloading technologies such as Wi-Fi and D2D were proposed to en route the delay tolerant applications through Wi-Fi APs and D2D links. It is necessary to illustrate the impact of daily user traffic profile, small cell access schemes and traffic-type while deciding how much of the traffic should be offloaded to small cells. It is also important to assess the number of active small cells based on the active user population factor (AUPF), since AUPF defines the ratio of the number of active mobile users and the number of total mobile users, and it also describes the daily user traffic profile. In this context, we propose that the population of smallcells is strictly depending on the traffic load due to active mobile users, which is a random variable and time-varying. Therefore, in this paper, the AUPF, small cell access scheme and traffic-type are included into a PL based TO strategy to minimize the congested macrocell traffic.

A Study on Propagation Models for 60 GHz Signals in Indoor Environments

“…As the mobile data traffic increases, cellular networks can congestion and mobile data can be transferred to Wi-Fi Access Points (APs) in order to better distribute the traffic load (Wang et al, 2019). This approach is being considered for 5G systems employing the 60 GHz band (Ekti et al, 2016). In addition, the 60 GHz band allows for the reduction of the radios and antennas because of the small wavelength at this frequency (Sharmin and Boby, 2020).…”