A quality of experience-aware association algorithm for 5G heterogeneous networks

The rise of Over The Top (OTT) content providers and the introduction of numerous applications has been driving the growth of mobile data traffic in the past few years. The applications' various Quality of Service (QoS) requirements as well as the use of multiple devices per user have increased the traffic heterogeneity, pressing the telecommunications industry to the deployment of 5G networks in 2020. At the same time, the rise of OTT providers has also led to the decrease of the Mobile Network Operators' (MNOs) revenues. Under these circumstances, the MNOs need to guarantee the users' Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements, while ensuring the sustainability of a 5G investment. To this end, we consider a 5G Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) deployment where MNOs use a QoE-based charging scheme. We propose a heuristic, QoE-aware user association algorithm to maximize the MNO profit, while providing high QoE. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can handle traffic heterogeneity by achieving substantial profit and QoE gains, compared to a baseline SINR-based scheme.