Load Balancing User Association in Millimeter Wave MIMO Networks

Abstract

User association is necessary in dense millimeter wave (mmWave) networks to determine which base station a user connects to in order to balance base station loads and maximize a network utility. Given that mmWave connections are highly directional and vulnerable to small channel variations, user association changes these connections and hence significantly affects the network interference and consequently the users’ instantaneous rates. In this paper, we introduce a new load balancing user association scheme for mmWave MIMO cellular networks which consider these dependencies. We formulate the user association problem as mixed integer nonlinear programming and design a polynomial-time algorithm, called worst connection swapping (WCS), to find a near-optimal solution. Simulation results confirm that the proposed user association scheme improves network performance significantly by adjusting the interference according to the association, and under the max-min fairness, also enhances cell-edge users’ transmission rates. We also show how the proposed algorithm can be applied under mobility. Furthermore, the proposed WCS algorithm outperforms other generic algorithms for combinatorial programming such as the genetic algorithm in both accuracy and speed at several orders of magnitude faster, and for small networks, where exhaustive search is possible, it reaches the optimal solution.