IEEE ICC 2013 - Wireless Communications Symposium

Optimal Resource Allocation in HetNets

Sem Borst , Stephen Hanly , Phil Whiting
Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ 07974-0636, USA
Macquarie University, North Ryde 2109 NSW, Australia

 Alcatel-Lucent

AbstractThe deployment of pico cells to cover trafc hot

spots within the footprint of a macro cell provides a powerful
approach to meet the massive growth in trafc demands fueled
by smartphones and bandwidth-hungry applications. Joint optimization of resource allocation and user association is of critical
importance to achieve the maximum capacity benets in such
heterogeneous network deployments (HetNets). We rst examine
the problem of minimizing the amount of resources required to
satisfy given trafc demands. We characterize the structure of
the optimal solution, and identify a simple optimality condition in
terms of the physical transmission rates of the edge users between
the macro cell and the various pico cells. We further demonstrate
how these structural properties can be leveraged in designing
a distributed online algorithm for achieving a max-min fair
throughput allocation across all users. Numerical experiments
are presented to illustrate the results.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Wireless cellular networks have experienced immense
growth in trafc loads over the last few years fueled by
the rapid proliferation of smartphones and bandwidth-hungry
applications. With forecasts of a booming growth in video
streaming, the sharp rise in trafc volumes is likely to continue, and put even greater strain on the capacity of cellular
networks in the near future.
A powerful approach to expand the capacity of cellular
networks and support further growth within the connements
of existing spectrum is to deploy pico cells so as to cover
areas with high trafc density (hot spots) within the footprints
of macro cells. In LTE the deployment of such HetNets
can be enabled via eICIC mechanisms where a macro cell
does not transmit during so-called Almost Blank Subframes
(ABS) so as to mitigate the interference experienced by the
pico cells. In addition, so-called cell range extension can
be induced through bias values in the hand-off procedures,
enticing users with weaker signal strengths into the pico cells
and facilitating greater ofoad from the macro cell [1], [8].
Since the allocation of resources and association of users are
evidently related, it is of critical importance that the ABS
settings and bias values are jointly optimized so as to achieve
the maximum capacity benets.
Cell selection and resource allocation in HetNets are relatively new topics [2], [5]. Bias settings have been investigated
via numerical experiments (e.g. [6]), but to our knowledge
no analytical approach has been developed. References [4],
[7], [9] do study optimization approaches to cell selection
and interference coordination, but the models and techniques
are quite different from ours. A method for optimal resource
allocation based on Gibbs sampling is proposed in [3].

978-1-4673-3122-7/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

In order to gain insight in the joint optimization of resource

allocation (e.g. ABS settings) and user association (e.g. bias
values), we focus in the present paper on a relatively simple
scenario of a single macro cell with several pico cells within its
coverage area. We rst examine the problem of minimizing the
amount of resources required to satisfy given trafc demands,
which is key in optimizing the systems efciency and loadcarrying capacity. The optimization involves determining how
to share the resources between the macro cell and the various
pico cells and deciding for each of the users whether it is
to be served by the macro or a pico cell. We describe the
structural properties of the optimal solution, and in particular
identify a simple optimality condition in terms of the physical
transmission rates of the edge users between the macro cell and
the various pico cells. We also demonstrate how the optimality
condition can be exploited in designing a distributed online
algorithm for obtaining a max-min fair throughput allocation
across all users. Numerical experiments are conducted for
some simple scenarios in order to illustrate the results.
II. M ODEL DESCRIPTION
We consider the scenario of a single macro cell with
L pico cells within its footprint (coverage area). The available
transmission resources (e.g. frequency slices, time slots, or
time-frequency slots) are assumed to be innitely divisible
and can be allocated either for exclusive use in the macro
cell or for concurrent use in the collective pico cells. There
are some users that can only be served by the macro cell,
while the rest of the users can either be assigned to the macro
cell or to a (unique) pico cell through suitable adjustment of
its size (e.g. via hand-off thresholds such as bias values). We
assume that the sizes of the various pico cells can be controlled
individually, and that each pico cell is subject to a certain
maximum size. We further suppose that no interference or
direct interaction occurs among the various pico cells.
To make things concrete, we assume that the resources are
time allocations of arbitrary size (in seconds). Pico cell l,
when expanded to its maximum size, has Nl users in it,
and the rates of these users (in bits per second) when fully
served by pico cell l are denoted by Rl,1 , Rl,2 , . . . , Rl,Nl .
Alternatively, these users can be served by the macro cell,
at rates Sl,1 , Sl,2 , . . . , Sl,Nl . It is possible for a user to get
allocated part of the time to a pico cell and part of the time to
the macro cell. We dene l,n = Rl,n /Sl,n as the rate ratio of
user n between pico cell l and the macro cell, and label the
users such that l,1 l,2 l,Nl . In addition, there
are N0 macro-cell-only users, with rates S0,1 , S0,2 , . . . , S0,N0 .

5437

III. T RAFFIC LOAD MINIMIZATION

In this section we focus on the problem of minimizing the
total amount of time required to satisfy given trafc demands.
We assume that user n in pico cell l has a trafc demand of
Dl,n bits, and wish to nd the time allocations to each of the
users (and in particular the association between macro and pico
cell) that minimize the total amount of time required. Note
that the macro-cell-only users are irrelevant to the problem,
and hence we do not further consider them in this section.
Let the time allocated to the pico cells (which can serve
their users concurrently) be denoted by f seconds. Also, let
xl,n and yl,n represent the amount of data (in bits) received by
user n Cl = {1, . . . , Nl } in pico cell l from that pico cell and
the macro cell, respectively. The above optimization problem
may then be formulated as the following linear program:
min
sub

L 

yl,n
Sl,n
l=1 nCl
 xl,n
f l
Rl,n

f+

(1)
(2)

nCl

xl,n + yl,n Dl,n l, n Cl

f 0, xl,n 0, yl,n 0 l, n Cl

(3)
(4)

While the above linear program could be solved by the simplex algorithm (or interior-point methods), we will show that
the optimal solution has a specic structure, which allows it to
be obtained by lower-dimensional, or even one-dimensional,
search procedures, which moreover lend themselves to distributed
Note that the linear program itself has
implementation.
L
1 + 2 l=1 Nl variables, which can be a signicant number,
particularly if there are several pico cells, and each can expand
to accommodate a large number of users.
In order to examine the structure of the optimal solution of
(1)-(4), dene gl (f ) as the amount of time required by the
macro cell to serve the residual trafc from pico cell l when
the amount of time available to that pico cell itself is f . Then
gl (f ) may be determined as the optimal value of the following
linear program (for given f ):
 yl,n
(5)
min
Sl,n
nCl
 xl,n
sub
f
(6)
Rl,n
nCl

xl,n + yl,n Dl,n n Cl

xl,n 0, yl,n 0 n Cl

(7)
(8)

We now introduce some notation in order to describe the

optimal solution of (5)(7). For any nl [0, Nl ], dene ml =
ml 1 Dl,n
Dl,ml
nl , pl = ml nl , and Fl (nl ) = n=1
Rl,n +(1pl ) Rl,ml ,
which may be interpreted as the amount of time required by
pico cell l to serve the (fractional) nl users with the highest
rate ratios. For conciseness, nl will be referred to as the size
of pico cell l. For a given cell size nl , dene the associated
throughput allocation xl,n (nl ), yl,n (nl ) by:
(i) xl,n (nl ) = Dl,n and yl,n (nl ) = 0 for n = 1, . . . , ml 1,

(ii) xl,n (nl ) = 0 and yl,n (nl ) = Dl,n for n = ml + 1, . . . , Nl ,

(iii) xl,ml (nl ) = (1 pl )Dl,ml , and yl,ml (nl ) = pl Dl,ml , so
that xl,ml (nl ) + yl,ml (nl ) = Dl,ml .
Also, dene nl (f ) = max{nl : Fl (nl ) f } as the maximum
cell size that pico cell l can support when the available amount
of time is f , ml (f ) = nl (f ), and pl (f ) = ml (f ) nl (f ).
The next lemma provides the optimal solution to the linear
program (5)(8), and in particular demonstrates that the optimal association of users between the macro and the pico cell is
dictated by the ratios l,n , which will be referred to as the rate
ratio rule. When the macro cell rates Sl,n are approximately
equal for all n Cl , which is a reasonable assumption when
the pico cell is not too close to the macro base station, this
roughly corresponds to association of users based on the pico
cell rates Rl,n , and can be implemented via bias values.
Lemma 1: (Rate ratio rule) The throughput allocation
xl,n (nl (f )), yl,n (nl (f )) associated with cell size nl (f ) is an
optimal solution to the linear program (5)(8).
The proof follows by considering the dual problem, dening
1
l
, Sl,n
} cordual variables l = l,ml (f ) and zl,n = min{ Rl,n
responding to the primal constraints (6) and (7), respectively.
Corollary 1: If xl,n , yl,n is an optimal solution to the linear
program (5)(7) as specied above, then one of the following
three scenarios must hold:
1) all users are entirely served by the macro cell:

xl =
xl,n = 0, yl,n = Dl,n n Cl
nCl

2) all users are entirely served by the pico cell:


yl,n = 0, xl,n = Dl,n n Cl
yl =
nCl

3) some users are served by the pico cell (xl > 0), while
others are served by the macro cell (yl > 0), and there
exist at most one pico-cell-edge user ml Cl with
xl,ml + yl,ml = Dl,ml such that:
xl,n = Dl,n , yl,n = 0
xl,n = 0, yl,n = Dl,n

n = 1, . . . , ml 1
n = ml + 1, . . . , Nl

The corollary follows from Lemma 1 by distinguishing three

cases: f = 0 (i.e. nl (f ) = 0), f Fl (Nl ) (i.e. nl (f ) = Nl ),
or 0 < f < Fl (Nl ) (i.e. 0 < nl (f ) < Nl ).
The statements of Lemma 1 and Corollary 1 hold for any
value of f , and in particular for the optimal value f of
the linear program (1)-(4). Thus there also exists an optimal

of that linear program with the same stated

solution xl,n , yl,n
properties. Now that an optimal throughput allocation xl,n ,

has been obtained in terms of f , we can make two key

yl,n
further observations:
1) It only remains to determine the optimal
value of f , i.e.,
L
the value of f that minimizes g(f ) = f + l=1 gl (f );
2) The function gl (f ) can be represented as

5438

Dl,ml (f )
+
gl (f ) = pl (f )
Sl,ml (f )

Nl

n=ml (f )+1

Dl,n
.
Sl,n

Note that gl (f ) is decreasing

linear with break
mandDpiecewise
l,n
points bl,m = Fl (m) = n=1 Rl,n
, m = 0, 1, . . . , Nl , and
negative slope l,m in the interval (bl,m1 , bl,m ), so gl (f ) is
convex since l,1 l,2 l,Nl . Further observe that
the left and right derivatives of gl (f ) may be expressed as
l,nl (f ) and l,nl (f + ) , respectively, with n
l (f ) = nl (f ),

+
(f
)
=
n
(f
)
+
1
for
f

F
(N
),
n
n+
l
l
l
l
l (f ) = nl (f ) =
Nl + 1 for f > Fl (Nl ), and the convention l,Nl +1 = 0.
+
Indeed, n
l (f ) = nl (f ) = m in the interval (bl,m1 , bl,m ),

+
nl (f ) = m = nl (f )1 at the break point bl,m , and n
l (f ) =
(f
)
=
N
+
1
when
f
>
b
.
n+
l
l,Nl
l
Since each of the functions
L gl (f ) is piecewise linear and
convex, so is g(f ), with 1+ l=1 Nl break points bl,m and left
L
L
and right derivatives 1 l=1 l,n (f ) and 1 l=1 l,n+ (f ) ,
l
l
respectively. Hence
the minimum of g(f ) is attained either at

L

> 0 where
f = 0 when
l=1 l,1 < 1 or at a point f
the derivative of g(f ) changes sign, yielding the optimality
criterion stated in the next lemma, which will be referred to
as the edge rate condition.
Lemma 2: (Edge rate condition) The time allocation f is
optimal if and only if
L

l=1

l,n (f ) 1
l

L

l=1

l,n+ (f )

(9)

with the convention that l,0 = 1.

The optimal allocation f may thusbe found by a oneL
dimensional search, scanning the 1 + l=1 Nl break points
bl,m and checking the edge rate condition (9).
It further follows that there always exists an optimal allocation f such that at least one of the pico cells has no split
user (allocated time in both the macro and pico cell). This
may also be deduced from the original linear program (1)-(4),
yielding an upper bound for the number of non-basic variables
in terms of the number of binding constraints.
The above-described one-dimensional search can either be
performed as a centralized operation, by gathering the trafc
demands Dl,n and rates Rl,n and Sl,n of all the users, or
implemented in a distributed fashion by having the pico
cells compute the gl (f ) functions and passing these to the
macro cell. In either case however, the search entails an
ofine computation, and hence we now proceed to describe
an iterative (L + 1)-dimensional method which lends itself to
an online implementation.
For given cell sizes n1 , . . . , nl , dene F max (n) =
maxl=1,...,L Fl (nl ), representing the maximum amount of time
required by any of the pico cells, and the set B(n) =
{l : Fl (nl ) = F max (n)} containing the pico cells with the
maximum time requirement. The method searches for the
values of the nl (f )s in an iterative way, and exploits the fact
that the edge rate condition in a certain sense is also sufcient
for optimality, as stated in the next lemma.
Lemma 3: If nl = Nl for all l
B(n) and


l,n 1 + (B(n)) =
l,n+ ,
(B(n)) =
lB(n)

lB(n)

+
with n
l = nl  and nl = nl + 1, then the associated time
max
(n) is optimal.
allocation f = F
The proof follows by noting that f > Fl (Nl ), thus n
l (f ) =
+
nl (f ) = Nl + 1 and l,n (f ) = l,n+ (f ) = 0 for all l
B(n),
l
l
so that the edge rate conditions (9) and (10) coincide.
We now describe an iterative scheme for nding cell sizes
n1 , . . . , nL that satisfy the optimality conditions stated in the
above lemma. For given cell sizes n1 , . . . , nL , calculate the
time requirements Fl (nl ), l = 1, . . . , L, and then determine
F max (n) = maxl=1,...,L Fl (nl ) and B(n) = {l : Fl (nl ) =
F max (n)} as above.
(1) For every pico cell l
B(n) with nl < Nl , increment the
size nl by a small amount in order to expand.
(2a) Furthermore, if (B(n)) < 1, then decrement the size nl
of each pico cell l B(n) by a small amount l = Rn in
l
order to shrink.
+
(2b) On the other hand, if (B(n)) > 1, then increment the
size nl of each pico cell l B(n) with nl < Nl by a small
amount l = Rn+ in order to expand.
l
Choosing the changes in the pico cell sizes proportional to the
edge rates ensures that the time requirements of the pico cells
in B(n) all remain equal.
It may be shown that for suitable step sizes , the cell
sizes converge to values that satisfy the conditions stated in
Lemma 3, and are hence optimal.

IV. M AX - MIN FAIRNESS

In the previous section we focused on the problem of
minimizing the total amount of time required to satisfy given
trafc demands. A closely related problem is to maximize the
throughput utility of the various users for a given amount of
time. Specically, interpreting the optimal throughput values
as trafc demands, we see that any Pareto-optimal throughput
allocation must satisfy the structural properties established in
the previous section. Since the optimal throughput values are
not known a priori, this does not generally provide an actual
way of solving the utility maximization problem. However,
in the particular case of maximizing the minimum weighted
throughput across all users, we do know beforehand that the
throughput values may be set proportional to the target ratios.
In that case, these targets may be taken as trafc demands, and
extensions of the search algorithms described in the previous
section can be applied as we will show.
Denoting by wl,n the relative throughput target of user n in
pico cell l, and adopting the convention x0,n 0, the problem
may be formulated as the following linear program:
max

(10)

5439

sub

min

l=0,...,L,n=1,...,Nl

(xl,n + yl,n )/wl,n

Nl
Nl
L 


yl ,n
xl,n
+
1
R
S

n=1 l,n
n=1 l ,n
l =0

l = 1, . . . , L,

or equivalently,
max
sub

z
Nl
Nl
L 


xl,n
yl ,n
+
1
R
S

n=1 l,n
n=1 l ,n
l =0

z (xl,n + yl,n )/wl,n

l = 1, . . . , L,

l = 0, . . . , L, n Cl ,

For given cell sizes nl [0, Nl ], dene ml = nl , pl =

ml n l ,
Fl (nl ) =

m
l 1

m=1

wl,m
wl,ml
+ (1 pl )
,
Rl,m
Rl,ml



Nl
N0
L


w0,n 
wl,ml
wl,m
+
+
pl
,
F0 (n) =
S
Sl,ml m=m +1 Sl,m
n=1 0,n

V. N UMERICAL RESULTS

with n (n1 , . . . , nL ). The value of Fl (nl ) represents the

amount of time required by pico cell l to provide wl,m bits to
user m, m = 1, . . . , ml 1, and (1 pl )wl,ml bits to user ml .
Note that the value of Hl (nl ) = 1/Fl (nl ) is the weighted
harmonic mean of the pico cell rates of the users in pico cell l
when the size is nl , and may be interpreted as the weighted
max-min throughput in pico cell l per unit of time. The values
of F0 (n) and H0 (n) = 1/F0 (n) have similar interpretations.
Also, dene F max (n) and B(n) as before. Note that the cells
in B(n) have the maximum time requirement for the given
target throughputs, and thus determine the minimum weighted
max-min fair throughput.
The next lemma provides a sufcient condition for a set of
cell sizes (n1 , . . . , nL ) to produce a weighted max-min fair
allocation. A similar iterative algorithm as described in the
previous section can be adopted for obtaining cell sizes that
satisfy this optimality condition.
Lemma 4: If the cell sizes n1 , . . . , nL satisfy


(B(n)) =
l,n 1 + (B(n)) =
l,n+ ,
lB(n)

lB(n)

f + g1 (f ) + g2 (f ) as a function of f for N = 30 per pico cell

each of the users, and only requires a total amount of time

1/ < F0 (n)+F max (n). Since the latter allocation is feasible
in the subnetwork as well, this contradicts the earlier statement
that the minimum time requirement is F0 (n) + F max (n).

and

l=1

Fig. 1.

+
with n
allol = nl  and nl = nl + 1, then the throughput
F max (n)

cation f xl,n (nl ), (1 f )yl,n (nl ), with f = F0 (n)+F max (n)

is weighted max-min fair.
The proof follows by considering the subnetwork consisting
of the macro cell and the pico cells in B(n). Suppose we wish
to provide target throughput values wl,m to each of the users in
this subnetwork. Viewing the wl,m values as trafc demands,
Lemma 3 implies that F0 (n) + F max (n) is the minimum time
requirement to meet these targets.
Now observe that the throughput allocation f xl,n (nl ),
(1 f )yl,n (nl ) yields a minimum weighted throughput of
f /F max (n) = (1 f )/F0 (n) = 1/(F0 (n) + F max (n)),
and suppose that this is not weighted max-min fair. Then
there must exist a different allocation, which only uses a
unit total amount of time, and provides a throughput wl,m
to each of the users in the original network, with >
1/(F0 (n)+F max (n)). Reducing all the allocations by a factor
yields an allocation which provides a throughput wl,m to

We now present numerical results for some simple illustrative scenarios. We rst examine the problem of determining
the minimum toal amount of time required to satisfy given
trafc demands, and then turn to the problem of nding the
max-min fair throughput allocation.
We start with a scenario with L = 2 pico cells, each with
N = 30 users, placed inside a macro cell at random positions
within an annulus with inner radius 100 m and outer radius
500 m. The path loss from the pico cell is 0 dB at 100 m and
the path loss exponent is 4. The users in pico cell l have a
common macro cell rate Sl , which is determined by the path
loss. The trafc demand is 100 Kbps per user.
The plot in Figure 1 shows the total amount of time f +
g1 (f ) + g2 (f ) required to satisfy the given trafc demands as
a function of the amount of time f allocated to the pico cells.
Note that f + g1 (f ) + g2 (f ) is a convex function as observed
before, and that the minimum is achieved before either pico
cell is exhausted, i.e., it has been allocated a sufcient amount
of time to carry its full trafc demand. (Exhaustion for one of
the pico cells occurs around f 0.92.) The rate ratios around
the optimum are found to be
R1 (f )
R2 (f )
= 0.4041,
= 0.5986,
S1
S2
so the sum is roughly 1 (more precisely 1.0027), which is
in close agreement with the edge rate condition (9). In a
further experiment the number of users in each pico cell
was reduced to N = 5 in order to bring out the effect of
discreteness more clearly. As the graph in Figure 2 indicates,
the function f + g1 (f ) + g2 (f ) is indeed piece-wise linear, as
observed before. The minimum is therefore attained where the
directional derivative changes sign, as it does around f 0.55.
The rate ratios around the optimum are found to be
R1 (f )
R2 (f )
= 0.4221,
= 0.6057,
S1
S2
yielding a slightly negative overall derivative of 0.0278. At
the optimum and just above, the rate ratio for pico cell 1
drops to R1 (f )/S1 = 0.3937, and the overall derivative turns
slightly positive, 0.0006.

5440