Traffic convexity aware cellular networks: a vehicular heavy user perspective

Rampant mobile traffic increase in modern cellular networks is largely due to large-sized multimedia contents. Recent advancements in smart devices as well as radio access technologies promote the consumption of bulky content, even for passengers in moving vehicles, referred to as vehicular heavy users. In this article the emergence of vehicular heavy user traffic is observed by field experiments conducted in 2012 and 2015 in Seoul, Korea. The experiments reveal that such traffic is becoming dominant, as shown by the 8.62 times increase in vehicular heavy user traffic while total traffic increased just 3.04 times. To resolve this so-called VHP, we propose a cell association algorithm that exploits user demand diversity for different velocities. This user traffic pattern is discovered first by our field trials, which is convex-shaped over velocity, that is, walking user traffic is less than stationary or vehicular user traffic. As VHP becomes severe, our numerical evaluation verifies that the proposed cell association outperforms in practice a well-known load balancing association, cell range expansion. In addition to cell association, several complementary techniques are suggested in line with the technical trend toward 5G.