FiWi enhanced LTE-A HetNets with unreliable fiber backhaul sharing and WiFi offloading

To cope with the unprecedented growth of mobile data traffic, we investigate the performance gains obtained from unifying coverage-centric 4G mobile networks and capacity-centric fiber-wireless (FiWi) broadband access networks based on data-centric Ethernet technologies with resulting fiber backhaul sharing and WiFi offloading capabilities. Despite recent progress on backhaul-aware 4G studies with capacity-limited backhaul links, the performance-limiting impact of backhaul latency and reliability has not been examined in sufficient detail previously. In this paper, we evaluate the maximum aggregate throughput, offloading efficiency, and in particular the delay performance of FiWi enhanced LTE-A heterogeneous networks (HetNets), including the beneficial impact of various localized fiber-lean backhaul redundancy and wireless protection techniques, by means of probabilistic analysis and verifying simulation, paying close attention to fiber backhaul reliability issues and WiFi offloading limitations due to WiFi mesh node failures as well as temporal and spatial WiFi coverage constraints.