Social-Aware Load Balancing System for Crowds in Cellular Networks

Over time, load balancing systems in cellular networks have been key to avoiding overload problems in the network and to maintaining a correct resource allocation and performance. However, the classical approaches were not designed for the dynamism generated by user behavior. The big crowds of users at certain social venues are one of the main concerns of mobile operators due to the load imbalance generated. Additionally, the mobility of users who attend social events (e.g., sports events, concerts, etc.) greatly impacts network performance due to its high correlation with network traffic. The availability to inform about events, particularly regarding venue location (e.g., stadiums, concert halls, convention centers) is exponentially growing thanks to its proliferation in social networks through geolocation databases and other functionalities. Therefore, the present work proposes a novel load balancing system integrating a fuzzy logic controller algorithm with social-awareness, which considers the relative position between cell sites and the social event venue in order to configure the network parameters. This approach is evaluated for different configurations of load balancing methods simulated on an urban macro scenario, mitigating the impact of the number of users per cell without degrading the signal quality. In this way, results show that social event data information plus soft or aggressive transmission power changes in cells can help to maintain the balance in the number of users per cell during mass events.