The exploitation of already deployed wireless local area networks (WLAN)s(e.g., WiFi access points (AP)s) has attracted considerable attention, as anefficient and practical method to improve the performance of beyond 4G wirelessnetworks. In this paper, we propose a novel communication paradigm to satisfythe performance demands of future wireless networks: a hybrid Cellular/WLANnetwork architecture with wireless offloading. In contrast to the commonlyadopted practice of WiFi offloading, where the WLAN APs have a wired backhaul(e.g., Digital Subscriber Line), we propose a wireless offloading approach,where the WLAN APs will share their wireless cellular broadband connection withother users. These users will select their serving node, i.e., the macro-celleNodeB or a WLAN AP, based on a certain selection criterion. Thus a challengingresearch field is originated, where interfering effects and wireless resourceslimitations play a dominant role. Important performance metrics of the proposedhybrid scheme, including the bit error probability, the ergodic capacity andthe average signal-to-interference-plus noise ratio, are theoretically studiedand closed form expressions are derived for the single-user case with multipleinterferers, for both identical and non-identical fading conditions. Also,based on the general multi-cellular hybrid WLAN-Cellular concept, we firstpropose a intercell interference minimization approach. Then we present a novelscheme for achieving frequency reuse equal to one within a single macro-cell,under specific performance criteria and constraints, that guarantee the overallcell or the individual user QoS requirements.
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