Delay and Reliability Tradeoffs in Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Network densification is one of the dominant evolutions to increase network capacity toward future cellular networks. However, the complex and random interference in the resultant interference-limited heterogeneous cellular networks (HCN) may deteriorate packet transmission reliability and increase transmission delay, which are essential performance metrics for system design in HCN. By modeling the locations of base stations (BSs) as superimposed of independent Poisson point process, we propose an analytical framework to investigate delay and reliability tradeoffs in HCN in terms of timely throughput and local delay. In our analysis, we take the BS activity and temporal correlation of transmissions into consideration, both having significant effects on the performances. The effects of mobility, BS density, and association bias factor are evaluated through numerical results.