Design, Modeling, and Performance Analysis of Multi-Antenna Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

• Published in: IEEE transactions on communications Vol. 64; no. 7; pp. 3104 - 3118
• Main Authors: Shojaeifard, Arman, Hamdi, Khairi Ashour, Alsusa, Emad, So, Daniel K. C., Jie Tang, Kai-Kit Wong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.07.2016; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Analytical models; Antennas; Cellular communication; Channels; Communication channels; Computational efficiency; Computing time; Design analysis; downlink heterogeneous cellular networks; Interference; Mathematical models; MIMO; Multi-antenna communications; Receiving antennas; Spectra; stochastic geometry theory; Transmitting antennas
• ISSN: 0090-6778; 1558-0857
• DOI: 10.1109/TCOMM.2016.2572187

This paper presents a stochastic geometry-based framework for the design and analysis of downlink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) heterogeneous cellular networks with linear zero-forcing transmit precoding and receive combining, assuming Rayleigh fading channels and perfect channel state information. The generalized tiers of base stations may differ in terms of their Poisson point process spatial density, number of transmit antennas, transmit power, artificial-biasing weight, and number of user equipments served per resource block. The spectral efficiency of a typical user equipped with multiple receive antennas is characterized using a non-direct moment-generating-function-based methodology with closed-form expressions of the useful received signal and aggregate network interference statistics systematically derived. In addition, the area spectral efficiency is formulated under different space-division multiple-access and single-user beamforming transmission schemes. We examine the impact of different cellular network deployments, propagation conditions, antenna configurations, and MIMO setups on the achievable performance through theoretical and simulation studies. Based on the state-of-the-art system parameters, the results highlight the inherent limitations of baseline single-input single-output transmission and conventional sparse macro-cell deployment, as well as the promising potential of multi-antenna communications and small-cell solution in interference-limited cellular environments.