Distributed load balancing by two-hop relaying in LTE-Advanced networks

Next-generation Long Term Evolution - Advanced (LTE-A) constitutes a promising solution to withstand the exponential growth of cellular connections related to user equipment devices (UEs) and their increasing demands of bandwidth. Relaying is a technique contemplated in this type of cellular networks where multi-hop communications can be established between nodes (UEs and relay nodes [either fixed or mobile]) to improve link quality and balance the network load between neighboring evolved Node Base stations (eNodeBs). Particularly, due to the dynamic behavior of Mobile Relay Nodes (MRNs), relaying becomes more challenging because there is a need to implement effective methods to choose multi-hop links that can guarantee acceptable levels of Quality of Service (QoS), while balancing the data traffic between different eNodeBs (for improving the robustness of the network), and with the handicap of mobility. This work presents a distributed algorithm in which MRNs act as intermediate relays between underloaded eNodeBs and UEs previously attached to other overloaded cell by dynamically assigning them a portion of the Resource Blocks initially scheduled for the corresponding intermediate MRN (by its serving eNodeB). Results show that multi-hop forwarding can be beneficial for the network performance enhancement in terms of per-user throughput and network load balancing.