The next generations of mobile networks will be deployed as ultra-dense networks, to match the demand for increased capacity and the challenges that communications in the higher portion of the spectrum (i.e., the mmWave band) introduce. Ultra-dense networks, however, require pervasive, high-capacity backhaul solutions, and deploying fiber optic to all base stations is generally considered to be too expensive for network operators. The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has thus introduced Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB), a wireless backhaul solution in which the access and backhaul links share the same hardware, protocol stack, and also spectrum. The multiplexing of different links in the same frequency bands, however, introduces interference and capacity sharing issues, thus calling for the introduction of advanced scheduling and coordination schemes. This paper proposes a semi-centralized resource allocation scheme for IAB networks, designed to be flexible, with low complexity, and compliant with the 3GPP IAB specifications. We develop a version of the Maximum Weighted Matching (MWM) problem that can be applied on a spanning tree that represents the IAB network and whose complexity is linear in the number of IAB-nodes. The proposed solution is compared with state-of-the-art distributed approaches through end-to-end, full-stack system-level simulations with a 3GPP-compliant channel model, protocol stack, and a diverse set of user applications. The results show how that our scheme can increase the throughput of cell-edge users up to 5 times, while decreasing the overall network congestion with an end-to-end delay reduction of up to 25 times.

中文翻译：

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5G NR集成接入和回程的资源管理：一种半集中式方法

下一代移动网络将被部署为超密集网络，以适应对容量增加的需求以及频谱较高部分（即毫米波频段）的通信带来的挑战。但是，超密集网络需要普遍使用的大容量回程解决方案，通常认为将光纤部署到所有基站对于网络运营商来说太昂贵了。因此，第三代合作伙伴计划（3GPP）引入了集成接入和回程（IAB），这是一种无线回程解决方案，其中，访问和回程链路共享相同的硬件，协议栈和频谱。但是，在相同频带中对不同链路进行多路复用会带来干扰和容量共享问题，因此，需要引入高级调度和协调方案。本文提出了一种用于IAB网络的半集中式资源分配方案，该方案旨在灵活，低复杂度并符合3GPP IAB规范。我们开发了一个最大加权匹配（MWM）问题的版本，该版本可以应用于代表IAB网络且其复杂度在IAB节点数方面呈线性关系的生成树。通过具有3GPP兼容通道模型，协议栈和各种用户应用程序的端到端全栈系统级仿真，将所提出的解决方案与最新的分布式方法进行了比较。结果表明，我们的方案如何将蜂窝边缘用户的吞吐量提高了5倍，