Backhaul-aware Joint User Association and Resource Allocation for Energy-constrained HetNets

Cellular networks are now rapidly evolving to the renewable heterogeneous network (HetNet) architectures, where a mixture of macro base stations (BSs) and small cell BSs coexist. Particularly, these BSs are partly-powered or self-powered by renewable energy sources (RES). In this context, joint user association and resource allocation is challenging. In addition, wireless backhaul is rapidly becoming a reality for small cells, which generally has significantly less bandwidth and larger delay. Thus, the limited backhaul becomes a crucial constraint. In this paper, with the goal of maximizing the network utility, the backhaul-aware user association and resource allocation is jointly considered for energy-constrained HetNets. Based on the complementary slackness property, BSs’ efficient and meaningful resource allocation is achieved, and then a distributed user association algorithm is proposed. Furthermore, a virtual scheme, which is based on network function virtualization (NFV) and software-designed networking (SDN), is developed. Simulation results demonstrate the improvement on network utility and load balancing with the proposed algorithm.