Enriching self‐organizing networks use cases with opportunistic features: a coverage and capacity optimization paradigm. (1st July 2013)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Karvounas, Dimitrios; Vlacheas, Panagiotis; Georgakopoulos, Andreas; Stavroulaki, Vera; Demestichas, Panagiotis
• Other Names: Tsagkaris Kostas guestEditor.; Gruber Markus guestEditor.; Sayrac Berna guestEditor.
• Is Part Of: International journal of network management. Volume 23:Number 4(2013:Jul./Aug.)
• Page Start: 272
• Page End: 286
• Publication Date: 2013-07-01
• Subjects: Computer networks -- Management -- Periodicals; 004.6
• DOI: 10.1002/nem.1829
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1055-7148

Abstract

SUMMARY: Self‐organizing networks (SONs) have been introduced into long‐term evolution in order to configure and optimize the network in an autonomic manner. However, in some situations the reconfiguration of the entire network is not the most cost‐efficient solution. Consequently, opportunistic networks have been introduced as operator‐governed, coordinated extensions of the infrastructure that are created dynamically where and when they are needed, exploiting the radio environment. This work proposes an enhanced SON functional architecture (FA) with opportunistic features in order to handle such situations through the manipulation of ONs. In addition, the proposed FA is utilized in a coverage and capacity optimization use case, where small cells are deployed in order to extend the capacity of a macro base station (BS). Users opportunistically exploit the resources (i.e. resource blocks) of the small cells. In addition, the small cells are configured to the optimal power level in order to maximize the users' throughput without causing interference to the other users. Two different approaches of controlling the interference among the macro BS and the small cells are presented, namely soft constraint and hard constraint cases. Furthermore, apart from maximizing the users' throughput, emphasis is given to the fairness among the users and on the quality‐of‐service provision through a proper resource allocation. The evaluation proved that when small cells are introduced the system's throughput is increased by 12.76% when the macro BS and the small cells cannot use the same resource blocks simultaneously (hard constraint case) and by 8.25% when the reuse is possible. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Abstract : This paper proposed an enhanced SON Functional Architecture with opportunistic features in order to handle situations that classic SON features are not so efficient. The opportunity that was exploited was the presence of small cells within the area of a macro‐cell. Users opportunistically exploit the resources (i.e. resource blocks) of the small cells in order to maximize their throughput and minimize the suffered interference, while fairness is also taken into account.