Access Point Contention-based Distributed Scheduling in Densely Deployed Network Environments

Access Point Contention-based Distributed Scheduling in Densely Deployed Network Environments

With increasing demands for high data rate services, femtocell networks or small cell sized WLANs have emerged as promising technologies. Since each femtocell network or WLAN consists of uncoordinated subnetworks independently, interference from others can degrade overall network capacity severely. In this paper, we address the interference problem between uncoordinated Access Points (APs) and propose a distributed AP scheduling scheme in a densely deployed femtocell network. To mitigate the interference problem, our proposal focuses on sharing the time resource through AP contention while previous researches have focused on adjusting power and frequency resources. According to the contention result, a winning AP is determined to use the next time frame solely. To operate in a fully distributed manner, our proposal needs help from Mobile Nodes (MNs) and requires a new synchronous frame structure which uses special common control channels. Simulation results show our proposed scheme doubles the network capacity compared to the legacy non-contending scheme.

With increasing demands for high data rate services, femtocell networks or small cell sized WLANs have emerged as promising technologies. Since each femtocell network or WLAN consists of uncoordinated subnetworks independently, interference from others can degrade overall network capacity severely. In this paper, we address the interference problem between uncoordinated Access Points (APs) and propose a distributed AP scheduling scheme in a densely deployed femtocell network. To mitigate the interference problem, our proposal focuses on sharing the time resource through AP contention while previous researches have focused on adjusting power and frequency resources. According to the contention result, a winning AP is determined to use the next time frame solely. To operate in a fully distributed manner, our proposal needs help from Mobile Nodes (MNs) and requires a new synchronous frame structure which uses special common control channels. Simulation results show our proposed scheme doubles the network capacity compared to the legacy non-contending scheme.