QoS-Guaranteed Radio Resource Management in LTE-A Co-Channel Networks with Dual Connectivity

Abstract

Dual connectivity (DC) was first proposed in 3GPP Release 12 which allows one piece of user equipment (UE) to connect to two base stations in heterogeneous networks (HetNet) at the same time, to increase the flexibility of resource utilization. DC has been further extended to multiple connectivity in 5G New Radio (NR). On the other hand, different UE tends to have different bandwidth requirements. Thus, in DC, one of the challenging issues is how to integrate resources from two base stations to enhance the quality of service (QoS) as well as the data transfer rate of each UE. In this paper, we proposed novel resource management mechanisms to improve the QoS of UE in the co-channel dual connectivity network. In terms of resource allocation, we designed the (MTS) which, in principle, allocates a resource block to the UE with the best channel quality while considering the issues of intercell resource allocation and the QoS requirement of each UE. In order to balance the load of different cells, we designed a novel cell selection scheme based on the HetNet Congestion Indicator (HCI) which considers not only the signal quality of UE but also the remaining resources of each base station. To improve the QoS of cell edge UE, cell range expansion (CRE) and the Almost Blank Subframe (ABS) were proposed in 3GPP. In this paper, based on Q-learning, we designed an adaptive mechanism which dynamically adjusts the ABS ratio according to the network condition to improve resource utilization. Our simulation results showed that our MTS scheduler was able to achieve a 31.44% higher data rate than the Proportional Fairness Scheduler; our HCI cell selection scheme yielded a 2.98% higher data rate than the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) cell selection scheme; the QoS satisfaction rate of our Q-learning dynamic ABS scheme was 4.06% higher than that of the Static ABS scheme. Finally, for the cell edge users who often suffer poor data transfer rate, by integrating the mechanisms of DC, CRE, and ABS, our experimental results showed that the QoS satisfaction ratio of cell edge UEs could be improved by 10.76% as compared to the single connectivity and no ABS situation.