Backhaul-aware self-organizing operator-shared small cell networks

Despite its notable importance, backhauling has - thus far - been a largely overlooked issue. However, driven by the uptake of small cell networks, current dedicated backhaul solutions are no longer viable for mobile operators, calling for novel deployment and backhaul-aware access strategies. In this paper, following the market´s latest developments in infrastructure sharing, we investigate the uplink performance improvement when using a spatially-close open access small cell over one operator´s carrier and simultaneously a direct access over another carrier. An important constituent of our work is the optimization problem of joint access and in-band (over-the-air) backhaul for the small cell link. Given the large degree of parametric freedom, another important constituent is the use of cognitive self-organizing networking mechanisms in the form of reinforcement learning, to autonomously optimize the resources allocated to and within each carrier. Simulation results corroborate our findings, with reported performance improvements of 40% under completely autonomous operating conditions when compared to benchmark backhaul approaches.