Adaptive De-Coupling and Multi-BS Association in Heterogeneous Networks

This paper proposes a novel method for maximizing the spatial frequency reuse in cellular networks by exploiting the possibility to simultaneously associate each user to multiple base-stations (BSs). To this end, the proposed technique presents a criterion for determining when a user should be associated with one or more BSs and whether the uplink and downlink should be decoupled, based on minimizing the average interference power across the network. To minimize the effect of interference that may occur due to increasing the spatial frequency reuse, the proposed association methods are integrated with an overlap checking scheme to insure that the resources are orthogonalized between the interfering BSs and user equipments. The results show that significant performance improvements can be attained by the proposed scheme in comparison with other benchmark techniques.