User association in massive MIMO and mmWave enabled HetNets powered by renewable energy

This paper considers a hybrid heterogeneous network (HetNet), where macro cells adopt massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), and small cells adopt millimeter wave (mmWave) transmissions. We assume that all base stations (BSs) are solely powered by the renewable energy. The implementation of these emerging techniques has a substantial effect on the user association (UA). Motivated by this, we formulate a user association problem to maximize the network utility while the power cost of each BS does not exceed the harvested energy. To solve it, a low complexity distributed UA algorithm is proposed. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves higher throughput than the max reference signal received power (RSRP) and max signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) UAs. It also shows that increasing the number of antennas at the macro cell BS with more power consumption, the throughput continues to increase by using the proposed algorithm, compared to the decrease in throughput by using the existing ones. Increasing the number of mmWave BSs, mmWave BS antennas or mmWave bandwidths can significantly improve the throughput. Compared with massive MIMO macro cells, mmWave small cells play a dominant role in enhancing the throughput of the networks due to the larger bandwidths.