TY - JOUR
T1 - A Survey on Resource Allocation for 5G Heterogeneous Networks
T2 - Current Research, Future Trends, and Challenges
AU - Xu, Yongjun
AU - Gui, Guan
AU - Gacanin, Haris
AU - Adachi, Fumiyuki
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received October 6, 2020; revised January 11, 2021; accepted February 14, 2021. Date of publication February 17, 2021; date of current version May 21, 2021. This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61601071 and Grant 62071078; in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing under Grant cstc2019jcyj-xfkxX0002; in part by the Major Project of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China under Grant TC190A3WZ-2; in part by the Six Top Talents Program of Jiangsu under Grant XYDXX-010; and in part by the Jiangsu Province Innovation and Entrepreneurship Team under Grant CZ002SC19001. (Corresponding authors: Yongjun Xu; Guan Gui.) Yongjun Xu is with the School of Communication and Information Engineering, Engineering Research Center of Mobile Communications, Ministry of Education, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing 400065, China, and also with the Chongqing Key Laboratory of Mobile Communications Technology, Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Chongqing 400065, China (e-mail: xuyj@cqupt.edu.cn).
Publisher Copyright:
© 1998-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2021/4/1
Y1 - 2021/4/1
N2 - In the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication system, various service requirements of different communication environments are expected to be satisfied. As a new evolution network structure, heterogeneous network (HetNet) has been studied in recent years. Compared with homogeneous networks, HetNets can increase the opportunity in the spatial resource reuse and improve users' quality of service by developing small cells into the coverage of macrocells. Since there is mutual interference among different users and the limited spectrum resource in HetNets, however, efficient resource allocation (RA) algorithms are vitally important to reduce the mutual interference and achieve spectrum sharing. In this article, we provide a comprehensive survey on RA in HetNets for 5G communications. Specifically, we first introduce the definition and different network scenarios of HetNets. Second, RA models are discussed. Then, we present a classification to analyze current RA algorithms for the existing works. Finally, some challenging issues and future research trends are discussed. Accordingly, we provide two potential structures for 6G communications to solve the RA problems of the next-generation HetNets, such as a learning-based RA structure and a control-based RA structure. The goal of this article is to provide important information on HetNets, which could be used to guide the development of more efficient techniques in this research area.
AB - In the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication system, various service requirements of different communication environments are expected to be satisfied. As a new evolution network structure, heterogeneous network (HetNet) has been studied in recent years. Compared with homogeneous networks, HetNets can increase the opportunity in the spatial resource reuse and improve users' quality of service by developing small cells into the coverage of macrocells. Since there is mutual interference among different users and the limited spectrum resource in HetNets, however, efficient resource allocation (RA) algorithms are vitally important to reduce the mutual interference and achieve spectrum sharing. In this article, we provide a comprehensive survey on RA in HetNets for 5G communications. Specifically, we first introduce the definition and different network scenarios of HetNets. Second, RA models are discussed. Then, we present a classification to analyze current RA algorithms for the existing works. Finally, some challenging issues and future research trends are discussed. Accordingly, we provide two potential structures for 6G communications to solve the RA problems of the next-generation HetNets, such as a learning-based RA structure and a control-based RA structure. The goal of this article is to provide important information on HetNets, which could be used to guide the development of more efficient techniques in this research area.
KW - 5G communications
KW - Resource allocation
KW - heterogeneous networks
KW - machine learning
KW - spectrum efficiency
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100939531&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85100939531&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/COMST.2021.3059896
DO - 10.1109/COMST.2021.3059896
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85100939531
VL - 23
SP - 668
EP - 695
JO - IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials
JF - IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials
SN - 1553-877X
IS - 2
M1 - 9355403
ER -
