Optimal Cell Selection Method for 5G Heterogeneous Network

摘要

As a fifth-generation (5G) network realization technology, heterogeneous network (HetNet) and mobile/multi-access edge computing (MEC) are attracting attention. Because 5G HetNet has multi-frequency band / multi-type radio access technologies (RATs) cell configurations, the number of measurement target frequencies are increased in a conventional cell detection method, and the cell quality measurement time and power consumption increases. In addition, the blocking loss due to blockers on the propagation path is also large because millimeter waves exhibit strong rectilinear propagation. In the particular case of an urban environment, street trees, signs, and such are likely to act as blockers, and location/time/connection-destinations, where high throughput is feasible without the adverse influence of these blockers will be restricted. For this reason, the overhead of measuring the cell quality is large in a conventional cell selection method. In addition, it is difficult to perform cell selection at an appropriate time to facilitate high throughput without the effects of blockers. In order to address this problem, we have proposed a method to reduce the overhead of cell quality measurement by selecting connection-destination candidates by using position information and communication logs. In this paper, we evaluate computer simulation performance when the proposed method is applied in an environment with blockers. The evaluation results show that system throughput is improved at various moving speeds of user equipment (UE) even an environment with blockers, owing to the overhead reduction effect of the proposed method.