Versatile Resource Management for Millimeter-Wave Cellular Network: Near Interference-Free Scheduling Methodology

In millimeter-wave (mmWave) cellular network, the highly directional beam generated by large-scale antenna array considerably depresses the inter-cell/intra-cell interferences. To fully exploit this feature in resource management, we introduce the concept of near interference-free (NIF) scheduling, representing a well-designed user scheduling scheme which avoids the possible strong interferences in mmWave network. In this paper, a generalized NIF scheduling methodology is proposed to jointly design user scheduling, beam scheduling and power allocation. The proposed methodology exhibits versatility to handle various optimization objectives, including the maximization of (weighted) sum rate, the maximization of minimum user rate, and the minimization of total transmit power. We take into account 3-dimensional user scheduling (over time, frequency and spatial domain) under the constraints induced by hybrid analog-digital beamforming. The directional beam feature is utilized to simplify the problem, and leads to linearity/convexity in the optimization of resource allocation. For each of the studied optimization objectives, simulation results validate that our proposed NIF scheduling methodology outperforms the state-of-the-art user scheduling schemes.