Energy-efficient load-aware user association in ultra-dense wireless network

With the proliferation of smart devices, machine-to-machine communication, and wearable, data and traffic is increasing enormously. Ultra-densification has been considered a promising technique to achieve substantial advantages in capacity, data rate, and coverage. However, the extensive deployment of devices to support huge data traffic results in high interference and energy issues. This is due to the unplanned deployment of small cells with varying power and coverage. Due to small coverage, users will frequently be changing associations with the base station. In this regard, user association plays a critical role in interference management, load balancing, energy consumption, and spectral efficiency. This paper proposes an energy-efficient load-aware user association technique, which assists the user equipment in selecting an optimal base station. The proposed technique leads to a stable user association considering load (traffic) while improving energy efficiency. The proposed user association operation ends when all user equipment gets associated with base stations by achieving the equilibrium state. Simulation results show that the proposed user association scheme outperforms significantly in load balancing, sum rate, and energy efficiency compared to max-SINR based user association.