Resource Allocation and Node Placement in Multi-Hop Heterogeneous Integrated-Access-and-Backhaul Networks

We consider a heterogeneous MIMO-OFDMA based dense small cell (SC) system in which each macro cell base station (MBS) serves its coverage area with the help of small cell base stations (SBSs) through multi-hop wireless connections. The SBSs act as integrated access and backhaul (IAB) nodes that handle both access and backhaul traffics with wireless links. We first develop an optimal (sum-rate maximization) resource allocation (RA) algorithm which considers subcarriers/spatial subchannels assignment and the associated power allocations. We also present two low-complexity suboptimal RA schemes which, as verified by simulations, incur only minor performance loss in the high SNR region. Our RA algorithms can be applied to other multi-hop networks with general UE association rule and node location distributions. We study the channel aging effect caused by the time lag between the time channel state information (CSI) is measured and that when data transmission occurs. We show the benefit of channel prediction and the limit of a centralized RA approach. The advantages of frequency (channel) reuse and the multi-hop architecture are demonstrated as well. A related but perhaps more important system design issue for an IAB cellular network is the IAB node placement problem. With the given UE association rule and UE location distribution, we present systematic approaches to find the optimal node locations. For two special propagation models, we derive closed-form expressions for the node locations that maximizes a spectral efficiency lower bound. Numerical results validate the accuracy of our estimates based on either numerical evaluations or closed-form solutions.