On the capacity and energy efficiency of network scheduling in future ultra-dense networks

Massive densification of the radio network infrastructure is considered to be a promising solution to meet a rapidly increasing demand in future radio access networks. In this study we investigate the feasibility of a centralized approach for the allocation of radio network resources by studying the performance of a network scheduler that implements access node on/off scheduling in ultra-dense networks. The evaluation is performed by means of simulations for different distributions of mobile nodes and for different network densities. Simulation results show that considerable improvements in the network throughput and energy efficiency can be sought with an increasing network density. The improvements are independent of the mobile node distribution and diminish steadily as the network density increases. It is also shown that the gains are higher when mobile nodes are uniformly distributed as compared to a distribution where mobile nodes are clustered due to a higher number of mobile nodes per access node.