GreenInfra: Capacity of Large-Scale Hybrid Networks With Cost-Effective Infrastructure

The cost-effective impact and fundamental limits of infrastructure support with rate-limited wired backhaul links (i.e., GreenInfra support), directly connecting base stations (BSs), are analyzed in a large-scale hybrid network of unit node density, where multiantenna BSs are deployed. We consider a general scenario such that the rate of each BS-to-BS link scales at an arbitrary rate relative to the number of randomly located wireless nodes n. For the operating regimes with respect to the number of BSs and the number of antennas at each BS, we first analyze the minimum rate of each backhaul link CBS, required to guarantee the same throughput scaling as in the infinite-capacity backhaul link case. We then identify the operating regimes in which the required rate CBS scales slower than n
^ϵ
for an arbitrarily small ϵ>0 (i.e., the regimes where CBS does not need to be infinitely large). We also show the case where our network with GreenInfra is fundamentally in the infrastructure-limited regime, in which the performance is limited by the rate of backhaul links. In addition, we derive a generalized throughput scaling law including the case where the rate of each backhaul link scales slower than CBS. To validate the throughput scaling law for finite values of system parameters, numerical evaluation is also shown via computer simulations.