Connectivity and node throughput awareness for hybrid Optical/RF backhauling of 5G networks

In today's cellular networks, designing scalable, well-connected and cost effective backhauling system is a challenge due to the huge increase in the demand of mobile data services. In this paper, we aim to maximize the connectivity and the minimum throughput of the small-cell network by inserting new links of different backhauling technologies. The backhaul technologies considered include Optical Fiber (OF), Free Space Optics (FSO), and Radio Frequency (RF). We formulate the problem as a bi-objective optimization problem. We show that under realistic cost assumption and linear relaxation, the problem is a convex optimization problem. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieve close-to-upper-bound solution.