Fundamentals of Self-Powered Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Speaker:  Prof. Harpreet Dhillon (ECE, Virginia Tech)

Host: MICS

Date: October 17 (Friday), 2014
Time: 3 PM - 4 PM
Location: Whittemore 654 (6th Floor Conference Room)

Abstract:

The increasing complexity of heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets) due to the irregular deployment of small cells demands significant rethinking in the way cellular networks are perceived, modeled and analyzed. In addition to threatening the relevance of classical models, this new network paradigm also questions the feasibility of state-of-the-art simulation-based approach for system design. In this talk, we will discuss an alternate approach based on random spatial models that is not only tractable but also captures current deployment trends fairly accurately. First, we will present a general baseline model consisting of K different types of base stations (BSs) that may differ in terms of transmit power, deployment density and target rate. Modeling the locations of each class of BSs as an independent Poisson Point Process (PPP) allows the derivation of surprisingly simple expressions for key performance metrics. One interpretation of these results is that adding more BSs or tiers does not necessarily change the coverage probability, which indicates that the fears of “interference overload” in HetNets are probably overblown. Second, we will discuss how the baseline model can be generalized to study self-powered HetNets, where each BS is powered solely by a self-contained energy harvesting module that may differ across tiers in terms of the energy harvesting rate and energy storage capacity. Since a BS may not always have sufficient energy, it may not always be available to serve users. This leads to a notion of “availability region”, which characterizes the fraction of time each type of BS can be made available under a variety of operational strategies. The availability region also provides a way to quantify performance degradation due to the unreliability associated with energy harvesting.

Speaker:

Harpreet S. Dhillon received the B.Tech. degree in electronics and communication engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati, India, in 2008; the M.S. degree in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA, in 2010; and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, Austin, TX, USA, in 2013. After a postdoctoral year at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, CA, USA, he joined Virginia Tech in August 2014, where he is currently an Assistant Professor of electrical and computer engineering. He has held summer internships at Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, Crawford Hill, NJ, USA; Samsung Research America, Richardson, TX, USA; Qualcomm Inc., San Diego, CA, USA; and Cercom, Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy. He has been coauthor of three best paper award recipients: the 2014 IEEE Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper Award for the best paper published in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications in the previous 3 calendar years, the 2014 European Wireless Best Student Paper Award, and the 2013 IEEE International Conference in Communications (ICC) Best Paper Award in Wireless Communications Symposium. He received the USC Viterbi Postdoctoral Fellowship, the 2013 UT Austin Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) Leadership Award, the UT Austin Microelectronics and Computer Development Fellowship, and the 2008 Agilent Engineering and Technology Award, a national award for the best undergraduate research thesis in India. His research interests include communication theory, stochastic geometry, and wireless ad hoc and heterogeneous cellular networks.