Radio Resource Management for Wireless Indoor Communication Systems Performance and Implementation Aspects

Abstract: In this thesis, we investigate several radio resourcemanagement (RRM) techniques and concepts in an indoorenvironment with a dense infrastructure. Future wireless indoorcommunication networks will very likely be implemented atplaces where the user concentration is very high. At these hotspots, the radio resources must be used efficiently. The goalis to identify efficient RRM techniques and concepts that aresuitable for implementation in an indoor environment.Handling the high level of co-channel interference is shownto be of paramount importance. Several investigations in thethesis point this out to be the key problem in an indoorenvironment with a dense infrastructure. We show that a locallycentralized radio resource management concept, the bunchconcept, can give a very high performance compared to othercommonly used RRM concepts. Comparisons are made withdistributed systems and systems using channel selection schemeslike CSMA/CA. The comparisons are primarily made by capacityand throughput analysis which are made by system levelsimulations. Results show that the centralized concept can give85 percent higher capacity and 70 percent higher throughputthan any of the compared systems.We investigate several RRM techniques to deal with thechannel interference problem and show that beamforming cangreatly reduce the interference and improve the systemperformance. Beamforming, especially sector antennas, alsoreduce the transmitter powers and the necessary dynamic range.A comparison is made between the use of TD/CDMA and pure TDMAwhich clearly shows the performance benefits of usingorthogonal channels that separates the users and reduces theco-channel interference. Different channel selection strategiesare studied and evaluated along with various methods to improvethe capability of system co-existence.We also investigate several practical measures to facilitatesystem implementation. Centralized RRM is suitable forguaranteeing QoS but is often considered too complex. With thestudied centralized concept the computational complexity can bereduced by splitting the coverage area into smaller pieces andcover them with one centralized system each. This reduces thecomplexity at the prize of lost capacity due to theuncontrolled interference that the different systems produce.Our investigations show that sector antennas can be used toregain this capacity loss while maintaining high reduction incomplexity. Without capacity loss, the computational complexitycan be reduced by a factor of 40 with sectoring. Theimplementation aspects also include installation sensitivity ofthe indoor architecture and the effect of measurement errors inthe link gains. The robustness against installation errors ishigh but the bunch concept is quite sensitive to largemeasurement errors in the studied indoor environment. Thiseffect can be reduced by additional SIR-margins of the radiolinks.The studied bunch concept is shown to be promising for usein future wireless indoor communication systems. It provideshigh performance and is feasible to implement.Keywords:Radio resource management, indoorcommunication, the bunch concept, centralized RRM, dynamicchannel allocation, channel selection, co-channel interference,power control, feasibility check, capacity, throughput, qualityof service, beamforming, downtilting, sector antennas,co-existence, computational complexity, sensitivity analysis,measurement errors, infrastructure, system implementation,WLAN, HiperLAN/2, IEEE 802.11.