Diverse Cell Association Schemes for Fifth-Generation Wireless Networks

Abstract

One of the underlying challenges in infrastructure-based multi-cell wireless networks is ensuring the proper association of a particular mobile User Equipment (UE) to the appropriate base stations (BSs). In the network terminology, this is usually referred to as cell association, user association, cell selection, or BS assignment. For now, the term cell association will be used for further discussion within this paper. In a wireless network with dense deployment of the base stations (BSs), the number of potential BSs with which a UE can be associated increases significantly with the increasing network complexity. The network densification demands the need for designing optimal or distributed cell association schemes. This is because, in case of improper association of UEs with BSs, it may result in increased interference, reduced throughput, inefficient energy consumption, load imbalance and higher latency in both uplink and/or downlink. 5G cellular networks aim to improve the connection speed and provide ultra-low latency through heterogeneous environments. While maintaining these parameters, the Quality of Service (QoS) needs to be maintained along with a sustained data rate. In such a case, the design of efficient cell association scheme for smooth flow of the traffic in the network is a real challenge which needs to be tackled. The aim of this paper is to study cell association techniques for 5G and beyond wireless networks, analyze the benefits of the methods and propose evolved and better solutions for cell association schemes.