Throughput Region and Scheduling for Full-Duplex HetNets with Decoupled User Association

Abstract

This paper investigates the achievable downlink and uplink throughputs of users in a full-duplex (FD) heterogeneous network (HetNet) where users are allowed to associate with different downlink and uplink base stations (BSs) and adopt FD transmission to handle bidirectional traffic between them and their associated BSs. In order to exploit the downlink and uplink throughput limits, we propose the model of decoupled generalized user association and use it to define the full-duplex signal-to-interference ratio. We derive the decoupled rate-optimal user association (DROA) scheme that is able to make user associate with the BSs that provide them with the maximum downlink and uplink throughputs. For the DROA scheme, the explicit tight lower bounds on the link throughputs of an FD user are found in a neat form that characterizes general channel fading, user and BS intensities and imperfect self-interference cancellation. These bounds delineate the throughput regions of the FD user that inspire proposing the opportunistic FD scheduling algorithms able to maximize the sum throughput of each bidirectional traffic in the HetNet.