Recent Advances in Radio Resource Management for Heterogeneous LTE/LTE-A Networks

TLDR

Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) are a promising path toward LTE and LTE‑Advanced goals, yet radio resource management research has largely focused on interference mitigation while other aspects such as utilization, fairness, complexity, and QoS remain underexplored. This paper surveys the key challenges of HetNets and emphasizes their significance, proposing future research directions for RRM. We review and classify recent RRM schemes for LTE/LTE‑A HetNets—especially those targeting femtocells and relay nodes—providing qualitative comparisons across different approaches. Our discussion highlights the scarcity of current RRM studies and underscores the need for multi‑objective RRM solutions.

Abstract

As heterogeneous networks (HetNets) emerge as one of the most promising developments toward realizing the target specifications of Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) networks, radio resource management (RRM) research for such networks has, in recent times, been intensively pursued. Clearly, recent research mainly concentrates on the aspect of interference mitigation. Other RRM aspects, such as radio resource utilization, fairness, complexity, and QoS, have not been given much attention. In this paper, we aim to provide an overview of the key challenges arising from HetNets and highlight their importance. Subsequently, we present a comprehensive survey of the RRM schemes that have been studied in recent years for LTE/LTE-A HetNets, with a particular focus on those for femtocells and relay nodes. Furthermore, we classify these RRM schemes according to their underlying approaches. In addition, these RRM schemes are qualitatively analyzed and compared to each other. We also identify a number of potential research directions for future RRM development. Finally, we discuss the lack of current RRM research and the importance of multi-objective RRM studies.