Load balancing via relay in next generation wireless systems

A fundamental problem in current cellular systems is limited capacity. Adding to this problem is unbalanced traffic among the cells. Given the explosion of the wireless traffic, especially wireless data traffic for Internet/Web access, and limited spectrum available for licensing, congestion will occur in some cells, resulting in blocked new calls and dropped handoffs due to the lack of available data channels (or DCHs). Since the locations of the congested cells vary from time to time (e.g. downtown on Monday morning, or amusement parks on Sunday afternoon), it's difficult to guarantee a sufficient amount of resources in each cell in a cost-effective way. In this paper, we propose to integrate the cellular infrastructure with modern wireless/mobile relaying technologies to achieve dynamic load balancing among different cells. Our basic idea is to place a number of mobile relay stations (or MRSs) within each cell to divert traffic in one (possibly congested) cell to another (non-congested) cell.