Dynamic Self-Backhauling in 5G Networks

The continuing growth in traffic demands impose the need for the use of frequency bands in the centimeter-wave (cmWave) and millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum to increase the throughput. However, this leads to challenges in the system design because of the need for higher cell densification as well as cost-effective deployment. To overcome these challenges the concept of wireless self-backhauling can be used to provide high capacity network at reduced cost. In this paper, we investigate the performance of self-backhauling with flexible reuse of the resources for access and backhaul in a real-life street canyon scenario with dynamic blockages. The simulation results show that highly flexible access/backhaul and uplink/downlink scheduling with centralized coordination achieves significant throughput gain in median and 5th percentile of uplink (UL) and downlink (DL). Simulation based results also show that with the limitation of TDD flexibility, self-backhauling mainly provides uplink 5th percentile throughput gain.