SINR and Rate Meta Distributions for HCNs With Joint Spectrum Allocation and Offloading

This paper focuses on the meta distributions of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and user-perceived rate in heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs) with multiple tiers of base stations. On the one hand, it is desirable to offload users to small cells to alleviate the congestion in macrocells; on the other hand, such offloading would in turn cause an SINR degradation of the offloaded users, which needs to be mitigated through interference avoidance based on resource partitioning. Thus, in consideration of both aspects, we provide a general framework for modeling and analyzing joint spectrum allocation and offloading in an HCN using the K-tier homogeneous-independent Poisson model. With it, we derive the per-tier and overall moments of the conditional SINR and rate distribution given the point process, based on which the exact meta distributions are given. We show that the conventional SINR or rate performance evaluated at the typical user (averaging over all tiers and links in the HCN), by itself, is insufficient, and a much sharper version provided by the meta distribution is required in conjunction with the expected value to give a thorough assessment of the benefits of joint resource partitioning and offloading in HCNs.