Spectral Efficiency and Fairness Maximization in Full-Duplex Cellular Networks

Sammanfattning: Future cellular networks, the so-called 5G, are expected to provide explosive data volumes and data rates. To meet such a demand, the research communities are investigating new wireless transmission technologies. One of the most promising candidates is in-band full-duplex communications. These communications are characterized by that a wireless device can simultaneously transmit and receive on the same frequency channel. In-band full-duplex communications have the potential to double the spectral efficiencywhen compared to current half duplex systems. The traditional drawback of full-duplex was the interference that leaks from the own transmitter to its own receiver, the so- called self-interference, which renders the receiving signal unsuitable for communication.However, recent advances in self-interference suppression techniques have provided high cancellation and reduced the self-interference to noise floor levels, which shows full-duplex is becoming a realistic technology component of advanced wireless systems.Although in-band full-duplex promises to double the data rate of existing wireless technologies, its deployment in cellular networks is challenging due to the large number of legacy devices working in half-duplex. A viable introduction in cellular networks is offered by three-node full-duplex deployments, in which only the base stations are full-duplex, whereas the user- or end-devices remain half-duplex. However, in addition to the inherent self-interference, now the interference between users, the user-to-user interference, may become the performance bottleneck, especially as the capability to suppress self-interference improves. Due to this new interference situation, user pairing and frequency channel assignment become of paramount importance, because both mechanisms can help to mitigate the user-to-user interference. It is essential to understand the trade-offs in the performance of full-duplex cellular networks, specially three-node full-duplex, in the design of spectral and energy efficient as well as fair mechanisms.This thesis investigates the design of spectral efficient and fair mechanisms to improve the performance of full-duplex in cellular networks. The novel analysis proposed in this thesis suggests centralized and distributed user pairing, frequency channel assignment and power allocation solutions to maximize the spectral efficiency and fairness in future full-duplex cellular networks. The investigations are based on distributed optimization theory with mixed integer-real variables and novel extensions of Fast-Lipschitz optimization. The analysis sheds lights on two fundamental problems of standard cellular networks, namely the spectral efficiency and fairness maximization, but in the new context of full-duplex communications. The results in this thesis provide important understanding in the role of user pairing, frequency assignment and power allocation, and reveal the special behaviourbetween the legacy self-interference and the new user-to-user interference. This thesis can provide input to the standardization process of full-duplex communications, and have the potential to be used in the implementation of future full-duplex in cellular networks.