Prioritized Cell Association and Power Control in Uplink Heterogeneous Networks

A heterogeneous network (HetNet) is a mix of macrocell base stations (MBSs) underlaid by a diverse set of small cell base stations (SBSs) such as microcells, picocells and femtocells. These networks are employed to enhance network capacity, improve network coverage, and reduce power consumption. However, HetNet performance can be limited by the disparity of power levels in the different tiers. Further, conventional cell association approaches cause MBS overloading, SBS underutilization, excessive user interference and wasted resources. Power control and cell association (CAPC) should be determined based on user priority, channel condition and BS traffic load. However, ensuring priority user (PU) requirements while satisfying as many normal users (NUs) as possible is not considered in existing power control algorithms. In this paper, prioritized CAPC is proposed to solve the load balancing problem between MBSs and SBSs and meet the needs of all PUs. Performance results in Additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels are presented which show that the proposed scheme is a fair and efficient solution which reduces power consumption and has faster convergence than other CAPC schemes.