A QoS driven adaptive mechanism for Downlink and Uplink Decoupling in 5G

In current cellular networks, cell association is heavily based on the Downlink signal power and all devices are associated with the same Base Station (BS) in Downlink (DL) and Uplink (UL). While as of now this technique has been proved adequate in homogeneous networks where all BSs have similar transmission levels, in increasingly dense heterogeneous networks (HetNets) rate is heavily dependent on the load, which can significantly vary from BS to BS. Due to increased demands for usage over several devices in HetNets, large disparities in the DL pose a threat to the quality of services (QoS) rendered by the network and this technique seems obsolete. Decoupling Uplink and Downlink is the proposed solution, where the UL cell association is not necessarily based on the same criteria as the DL association. We propose using Signal to Noise Ratio (SINR) and Path Loss with Range Extension (PLRE) as factors for choosing the appropriate BS for connection in DL and UL respectively for every user, taking into consideration the BS’s Resource Block availability, to avoid overloading BSs. We will use simulations to test our approach, with different Path Loss offsets for PLRE, to note the importance of adaptive mechanisms.