DNA-GA: A New Performance Analysis Tool for the Uplink Cellular Networks

In this paper, we propose a new approach of network performance analysis for the uplink (UL) of cellular networks, which is based on deterministic network analysis using Gaussian approximation (DNA-GA). First, we present the DNA-GA analysis to investigate the UL signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) performance. Second, we introduce two approaches for upgrading the DNA-GA analysis to a macroscopic analysis. Finally, we perform a comparison of the performance between the proposed DNA-GA analysis and the existing macroscopic analysis based on stochastic geometry. Our results show that the DNA-GA analysis possesses a few special features: (i) shadow fading is naturally considered in the DNA-GA analysis while it is not the case with the stochastic geometry analysis; (ii) the shape and/or the size of cell coverage areas in the DNA-GA analysis can be made arbitrary for the treatment of hotspot network scenarios; (iii) the proposed DNA-GA analysis can handle nonuniform user distributions; (iv) the DNA-GA analysis can cope with any type of multi-path fading; (v) the DNA-GA analysis can be applied to multi-antenna base stations (BSs). These features make the DNA-GA analysis very useful for network performance analysis of the 5th generation (5G) systems with general cell deployment and user distribution, both on a microscopic level and on a macroscopic level.