QoS-Aware Energy-Efficient Association and Resource Scheduling for HetNets

Abstract

A heterogeneous network (HetNet) can actively utilize the spectrum reuse with low power consumption, and thus is promising for the next-generation cellular networks. However, there are some technical challenges to be overcome in order for HetNets to be practical, and we address the following two in this paper. One is how to formulate the association and resource scheduling problem in a way that an optimal solution can be found in a reasonable amount of time, and the other is how to accommodate varying users' demand. In order to minimize the power consumption and to satisfy varying users' quality of service requirements, we propose a low-complex, distributed association and resource allocation scheme. By taking a cost-based approach, we first separate a nonconvex joint association and resource allocation problem into two subproblems. The channel allocation and base station assignment problem is then relaxed so that the problem becomes tractable. For the power allocation problem, we introduce a low-complex iterative algorithm by using the decomposition theory. The evaluation results show that the proposed solution can maintain the overall power consumption minimized while satisfying the QoS requirements.