Utility-based joint routing and spectrum partitioning in relay LTE-advanced networks

This paper proposes a joint routing and spectrum partitioning algorithm for cellular network enhanced with two-hop fixed relay nodes (RNs) in 3GPP LTE-Advanced. To better improve spectrum efficiency and effectively alleviate the inter-cell interference of cell-edge users, a Soft Frequency Reuse (SFR) based spectrum assignment framework is proposed. Under this framework, we develop a utility-based heuristic routing algorithm which tries to maximize the system aggregate utility and to guarantee the fairness among users under the constraint imposed by spectrum partitioning scheme. The intensive computer simulations demonstrate the performance superiority of the RN enhanced cellular network (REC) employing our scheme in comparison with other resource allocation schemes and routing strategies.