Abstract
Wireless traffic is surging due to the prevalence of smart devices, rising demand for multimedia content and the advent of the “Internet of Things”. Network operators are deploying Small Cells alongside existing Macro Cells in order to satisfy demand during this era of exponential growth. Such Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) are highly spectrally efficient because both cell tiers transmit using the same scarce and expensive bandwidth. However, load balancing and cross-tier interference issues constrain cell-edge rates in co-channel operation. Capacity can be increased by intelligently configuring Small Cell powers and biases, and the muting cycles of Macro Cells. This paper presents a customised Genetic Algorithm (GA) for reconfiguring HetNets. The GA converges within minutes so tailored settings can be pushed to cells in real time. The proposed GA lifts cell-edge (2.5th percentile) rates by 32% over a non-adaptive baseline that is used in practice. HetNets are highly dynamic environments. However, customers tend to cluster in hotspots which arise at predictable locations over the course of a typical day. An explicit memory of previously evolved solutions is maintained and used to seed fresh runs. System level simulations show that the 2.5th percentile rates are boosted to 36% over baseline when prior knowledge is utilised.
Notes
- 1.
3GPP (December 2010, http://www.3gpp.org/).
- 2.
If \( pop\,size =1000\) and \( gens =100\) and runs are executed on a machine with 50 cores operating at \(2.66\,\mathrm {GHz}\).
- 3.
This traffic model is adopted since localisation errors are tens of meters in real networks. Hence, the properties of hotspots must be estimated.
References
Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2014–2019. Cisco, White Paper (online) (2015)
Aliu, O.G., Imran, A., Imran, M.A., Evans, B.: A survey of self organisation in future cellular networks. IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutorials 15(1), 336–361 (2013)
Branke, J.: Memory enhanced evolutionary algorithms for changing optimization problems. In: In Congress on Evolutionary Computation CEC99. Citeseer (1999)
Branke, J.: Evolutionary Optimization in Dynamic Environments, vol. 3. Springer Science & Business Media, Berlin (2012)
Claussen, H., Ho, L.: Multi-carrier cell structures with angular offset. In: 2012 IEEE 23rd International Symposium on Personal Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), pp. 1179–1184. IEEE (2012)
Deb, K., Myburgh, C.: Breaking the billion-variable barrier in real-world optimization using a customized evolutionary algorithm. In: Proceedings of the 2016 on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, pp. 653–660. ACM (2016)
Deb, S., Monogioudis, P., Miernik, J., Seymour, J.P.: Algorithms for enhanced Inter-cell Interference Coordination (eICIC) in LTE HetNets. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. (TON) 22(1), 137–150 (2014)
Dempsey, I., O’Neill, M., Brabazon, A.: Foundations in Grammatical Evolution for Dynamic Environments, vol. 194. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Fenton, M., Lynch, D., Kucera, S., Claussen, H., O’Neill, M.: Evolving coverage optimisation functions for heterogeneous networks using grammatical genetic programming. In: Squillero, G., Burelli, P. (eds.) EvoApplications 2016. LNCS, vol. 9597, pp. 219–234. Springer, Heidelberg (2016). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-31204-0_15
Fenton, M., Lynch, D., Kucera, S., Claussen, H., O’Neill, M.: Load balancing in heterogeneous networks using an evolutionary algorithm. In: 2015 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), pp. 70–76. IEEE (2015)
Hämäläinen, S., Sanneck, H., Sartori, C.: LTE Self-organising Networks (SON): Network Management Automation for Operational Efficiency. Wiley, Hoboken (2012)
Karaman, A., Uyar, Ş., Eryiğit, G.: The memory indexing evolutionary algorithm for dynamic environments. In: Rothlauf, F., Branke, J., Cagnoni, S., Corne, D.W., Drechsler, R., Jin, Y., Machado, P., Marchiori, E., Romero, J., Smith, G.D., Squillero, G. (eds.) EvoWorkshops 2005. LNCS, vol. 3449, pp. 563–573. Springer, Heidelberg (2005). doi:10.1007/978-3-540-32003-6_59
Liang, Y.: Real-time VBR video traffic prediction for dynamic bandwidth allocation. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews) 34(1), 32–47 (2004)
López-Pérez, D., Claussen, H.: Duty cycles and load balancing in HetNets with eICIC almost blank Subframes. In: 2013 IEEE 24th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC Workshops), pp. 173–178. IEEE (2013)
Lopez-Perez, D., Guvenc, I., De la Roche, G., Kountouris, M., Quek, T.Q., Zhang, J.: Enhanced intercell interference coordination challenges in heterogeneous networks. IEEE Wirel. Commun. 18(3), 22–30 (2011)
Madan, R., Borran, J., Sampath, A., Bhushan, N., Khandekar, A., Ji, T.: Cell association and interference coordination in heterogeneous LTE-a cellular networks. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 28(9), 1479–1489 (2010)
Morrison, R.W.: Designing Evolutionary Algorithms for Dynamic Environments. Springer Science & Business Media, Berlin (2013)
Peng, M., Liang, D., Wei, Y., Li, J., Chen, H.H.: Self-configuration and self-optimization in LTE-advanced heterogeneous networks. IEEE Commun. Mag. 51(5), 36–45 (2013)
Ramsey, C.L., Grefenstette, J.J.: Case-based initialization of genetic algorithms. In: ICGA, pp. 84–91. Citeseer (1993)
Shannon, C.E.: Communication in the presence of noise. Proc. IRE 37(1), 10–21 (1949)
Tall, A., Altman, Z., Altman, E.: Self organizing strategies for enhanced ICIC (eICIC). In: 2014 12th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt), pp. 318–325. IEEE (2014)
Tang, J., So, D.K., Alsusa, E., Hamdi, K.A., Shojaeifard, A.: Resource allocation for energy efficiency optimization in heterogeneous networks. IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun. 33(10), 2104–2117 (2015)
Winstein, K., Sivaraman, A., Balakrishnan, H.: Stochastic forecasts achieve high throughput and low delay over cellular networks. In: Presented as part of the 10th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2013), pp. 459–471 (2013)
Acknowledgements
This research is based upon works supported by the Science Foundation Ireland under grant 13/IA/1850. The authors are grateful to the reviewers and Dr. Miguel Nicolau for their helpful comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Lynch, D., Fenton, M., Kucera, S., Claussen, H., O’Neill, M. (2017). Configuring Dynamic Heterogeneous Wireless Communications Networks Using a Customised Genetic Algorithm. In: Squillero, G., Sim, K. (eds) Applications of Evolutionary Computation. EvoApplications 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10199. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55849-3_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55849-3_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-55848-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-55849-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)