Optimized Load-Aware Mechanism for Dynamic CoMP Clustering in Ultra-Dense Networks

Ultra-Dense Networks (UDN) offer enhanced network performance via a significantly high deployment density of small cells. The system efficiency highly depends on cell coordination using the Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) techniques. To allow better management of traffic load across cells, the key challenge is the clustering of CoMP-coordinated cells. This article provides an optimized mechanism based on the load-aware concept deployed in the cell clustering mechanism to ensure that the clusters are formed in a way that overloaded cells are fairly and appropriately clustered with available cells i.e. cells that have available resources and can offload heavy traffic from dense cells. The performance of the system has been observed using the system model adapted here compared with our previous work on dynamic CoMP clustering. Major improvements are presented in terms of spectrum efficiency and throughput performance.