The architecture of mobile networks has dramatically evolved in order to fulfill the growing demands on wireless services and data. The radio resources, which are used by the current mobile networks, are limited while the users demands are substantially increasing. In the future, tremendous Internet applications are expected to be served by mobile networks. Therefore, increasing the capacity of mobile networks has become a vital issue. Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) have been considered as a promising paradigm for future mobile networks. Accordingly, the concept of small cell has been introduced in order to increase the capacity of the mobile networks. A femtocell network is a kind of small cell networks. Femtocells are deployed within macrocells coverage. Femtocells cover small areas and operate with low transmission power while providing high capacity. Also, UEs can be offloaded from macrocells to femtocells. Thus, the capacity can be increased. However, this will introduce different technical challenges. The interference has become one of the key challenges for deploying femtocells within a certain macrocells coverage. Undesirable impact of the interference can degrade the performance of the mobile networks. Therefore, radio resource management mechanisms are needed in order to address key challenges of deploying femtocells. The objective of this work is to introduce radio resource control approaches, which are used to increase mobile networks' capacity and alleviate undesirable impact of the interference. In addition, proposed radio resource control approaches ensure the coexistence between macrocell and femtocells based on LTE-Advanced environment. Firstly, a novel mechanism is proposed in order to address the interference challenge. The proposed approach mitigates the impact of interference based on controlling radio sub-channels' assignment and dynamically adjusting the transmission power. Secondly, a dynamic strategy is proposed for the FFR mechanism. In the FFR mechanism, the whole spectrum is divided into four fixed sub-channels and each sub-channel is assigned for a different sub-area after splitting the macrocell coverage area into four sub-areas. The objective of the proposed scheme is to divide the spectrum dynamically based on the QoS indicators for each sub-area. Lastly, a novel packet scheduling scheme is proposed to improve the performance of femtocell networks. The proposed scheduling strategy assigns radio resources based on two objectives: increasing the network capacity and achieving better fairness among attached UEs.

One of the enabling technologies for Long Term Evolution (LTE) deployments is the femtocell technology. By having femtocells deployed indoors and closer to the user, high data rate services can be provided efficiently. These femtocells are expected to be depolyed in large numbers which raises many technical challenges including the handover management. In fact, managing handovers in femtocell environments, with the conventional manual adjustment techniques, is almost impossible to keep pace with in such a rapidly growing femtocell environment. Therefore, doing this automatically by implementing Self Organizing Network (SON) use cases becomes a necessity rather than an option. However, having multiple SON use cases operating simultaneously with a shared objective could cause them to interact either negatively or positively. In both cases, designing a suitable coordination policy is critical in solving negative conflicts and building upon positive benefits. In this work, we focus on studying the interactions between three self optimization use cases aiming at improving the overall handover procedure in LTE femtocell networks. These self optimization use cases are handover, Call Admission Control (CAC) and load balancing. We develop a comprehensive, unified LTE compliant evaluation environment. This environment is extendable to other radio access technologies including LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), and can also be used to study other SON use cases. Various recommendations made by main bodies in the area of femtocells are considered including the Small Cell Forum, the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) alliance and the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Additionally, traffic sources are simulated in compliance with these recommendations and evaluation methodologies. We study the interaction between three representative handover related self optimization schemes. We start by testing these schemes separately, in order to make sure that they meet their individual goals, and then their mutual interactions when operating simultaneously. Based on these experiments, we recommend several guidelines that can help mobile network operators and researchers in designing better coordination policies. / Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2012-12-05 22:35:27.538

Submitted by Edisangela Bastos (edisangela@ufpa.br) on 2014-01-13T19:18:21Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 23898 bytes, checksum: e363e809996cf46ada20da1accfcd9c7 (MD5) Dissertacao_AvaliacaoTecnologiaFemtocell.pdf: 6899905 bytes, checksum: 6f9fe92f8092f1159ecbcd1e607afc6e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Rosa Silva(arosa@ufpa.br) on 2014-01-16T12:20:24Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 23898 bytes, checksum: e363e809996cf46ada20da1accfcd9c7 (MD5) Dissertacao_AvaliacaoTecnologiaFemtocell.pdf: 6899905 bytes, checksum: 6f9fe92f8092f1159ecbcd1e607afc6e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-01-16T12:20:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 23898 bytes, checksum: e363e809996cf46ada20da1accfcd9c7 (MD5) Dissertacao_AvaliacaoTecnologiaFemtocell.pdf: 6899905 bytes, checksum: 6f9fe92f8092f1159ecbcd1e607afc6e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Mensurar os impactos do tráfego de aplicações interativas para TV Digital nas redes sem fio de 4a geração em especial WIMAX e femtocell tem sido um grande desafio para pesquisadores em todo o mundo, o teste destas tecnologias se mostra promissora para a melhor qualidade de serviço prestado pelas operadoras. Inicialmente, identificando o padrão de tráfego de rede através da aferição e caracterização de tráfego de uma aplicação interativa de TV Digital do Sistema Brasileiro de TV Digital (SBTVD). A partir de então, as simulações são feitas sobre uma rede sem fio. Para este estudo, a rede WiMAX foi escolhida como um de nossos estudo de caso. Um estudo dos impactos do uso desta aplicação em uma WMAN (Wireless Metropolitan Área Network) com WiMAX e também utilizando femtocells. Evidentemente, tecnologias sem fio apresentam uma grande variação da qualidade do sinal. Deste modo, é necessário utilizar uma solução para reduzir essa degradação no sinal. Dentre as possíveis soluções, o uso de femtocells surge como alternativa viável para estas melhorias, lembrando que uso de femtocell esta diretamente ligado para áreas onde o sinal é zero ou muito baixo. A utilização de simulações discretas através de ferramentas apropriadas como o OPNET, se mostram bastante úteis para viabilizar a utilização das tecnologias existentes, expondo-as a condições mais adversas de fluxo, carga , numero de usuários e distancias que certamente influenciam no desempenha de cada uma delas. / Traffic measurement on Digital TV interactive applications for fourth generation networks, especially WiMAX and femtocell, has been a challenge to researchers around the world. The traffic pattern of an interactive application on the Brazillian System of Digital TV (SBTVD) was identified. Simulations on a wireless network were carried out using data obtained of traffic analysis. In this work a WiMAX and a femtocell network were chosen to simulate the return channel of a Digital TV application on a WMAN (Wireless Metropolitan Area Network). In order to reduce signal attenuation, femtocell arises as a promising solution, reducing macrocell usage, as femtocells cover indoor environments. The simulations is this work were executed using OPNET software. Through them it is possible to estimate the feasibility of femtocell and WiMAX technologies as return channel for Digital TV.

Submitted by Irvana Coutinho (irvana@ufpa.br) on 2015-02-13T14:08:11Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 22974 bytes, checksum: 99c771d9f0b9c46790009b9874d49253 (MD5) Dissertacao_GreenMarkovAbordageml.pdf: 1014480 bytes, checksum: 78962cf42379d2207770c49f4976e8ef (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ana Rosa Silva (arosa@ufpa.br) on 2015-02-19T12:02:56Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 22974 bytes, checksum: 99c771d9f0b9c46790009b9874d49253 (MD5) Dissertacao_GreenMarkovAbordageml.pdf: 1014480 bytes, checksum: 78962cf42379d2207770c49f4976e8ef (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-02-19T12:02:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 22974 bytes, checksum: 99c771d9f0b9c46790009b9874d49253 (MD5) Dissertacao_GreenMarkovAbordageml.pdf: 1014480 bytes, checksum: 78962cf42379d2207770c49f4976e8ef (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / O uso da comunicação de voz e dados através de dispositivos móveis vem aumentando significativamente nos últimos anos. Tal expansão traz algumas dificuldades inerentes, tais como: ampliação constante de capacidade das redes e eficiência energética. Neste contexto, vem se consolidando o conceito de Green networks, que se concentra no esforço para economia de energia e redução de CO2. Neste sentido, este trabalho propõe validar um modelo de uma política baseado em processo markoviano de decisão, visando a otimizar o consumo de energia, QoS e QoE, na alocação de usuários em redes macrocell e femtocell. Para isso o modelo foi inserido no simulador NS-2, aliando a solução analítica markoviana à flexibilidade característica da simulação discreta. A partir dos resultados apresentados na simulação, a política obteve uma economia significativa no consumo energético, melhorando a eficiência energética em até 4%, além de melhorar a qualidade de serviço em relação às redes macrocell e femtocell, demonstrando-se eficaz, de modo a alterar diretamente as métricas de QoS e de QoE. / The use of voice and data communication via mobile devices has increased significantly in recent years. This expansion brings some difficulties such as: continuous expansion of network capacity and energy efficiency. In this context, has been consolidating the concept of Green Networks, which focuses on the effort to energy saving and CO2 reduction. Thus, this paper proposes validate a model of a policy based on Markov decision process to optimize energy consumption, QoS and QoE, in the allocation of macrocell and femtocell users in networks. For this the model was inserted into the network simulator NS-2, combining the Markov analytical solution to the characteristic flexibility of discrete simulation. From the results presented in the simulation, the policy obtained significant savings in energy consumption, improving energy efficiency by up to 4%, and improve the quality of service in relation to the macrocell and femtocell networks, demonstrating effective in order to directly change the metrics of QoS and QoE.