A Base Station Assignment Strategy for Radio Access Networks with Backhaul Constraints

Existing base station (BS) assignment methods in mobile networks are mainly driven by radio conditions. This is because it is assumed that the limiting factor in the access network is basically on the air interface. However, a growing concern is that the transport part of the mobile network can also represent a bottleneck. Thus, mechanisms only based on radio conditions may assign a user to a BS with an overloaded transport, which in turn may result in a degradation of the end user throughput and quality of service. In this paper we analyse a BS assignment strategy that incorporates transport capacity constraints in the decision making process of assigning the most suitable BS to mobile users. The strategy is compared to two common schemes which are exclusively based on air interface aspects. Provided results show that the proposed BS assignment strategy can effectively accommodate more connections than traditional techniques so that both radio and transport requirements are fulfilled in backhaul limited RAN deployment scenarios.