Resource allocation to femtocells for coordinated capacity expansion of wireless access infrastructures

Abstract

As the Internet has penetrated everyday life, more and more users will demand high-quality services. However, the Internet was not designed to handle such heavy usage. Thus, networks need to be enhanced in order to deal with the increased traffic. In this study, the use of opportunistic networks (ONs) is studied. ONs are operator-governed, coordinated extensions of the infrastructure and are created dynamically for a limited time frame. The problem studied is the capacity extension of congested infrastructure via resource allocation to femtocells. More specifically, a macro base station (BS) is considered with deployed femtocells within its area. As soon as a problematic situation is discovered, the congested BS notifies the network management entity which will determine the solution method. In our case, a proportion of terminals that cause the congestion will be offloaded to the nearby femtocells relieving the macro BS. This is achieved through two approaches: a greedy algorithm that allocates the minimum possible power level to femtocells in order to acquire as much terminals as possible, and an energy-efficient algorithm that assigns the minimum possible power level to the femtocells that are required to cover specific terminals. Femtocells that are not needed are switched off.