Modeling multi-tier heterogeneous small cell networks: rate and coverage performance

The rapid growth of small cells is driving cellular network toward randomness and heterogeneity. The multi-tier heterogeneous network (HetNet) addresses the massive connectivity demands of the emerging cellular networks. Cellular networks are usually modeled by placing each tier (e.g macro, pico and relay nodes) deterministically on a grid which ignores the spatial randomness of the nodes. Several works were idealized for not capturing the interference which is a major performance bottleneck. Overcoming such limitation by realistic models is much appreciated. Multi-tier relay cellular network is studied in this paper, In particular, we consider $${\mathscr {K}}$$ K -tier transmission modeled by factorial moment and stochastic geometry and compare it with a single-tier, traditional grid model and multi-antenna ultra-dense network (UDN) model to obtain tractable rate coverage and coverage probability. The locations of the relays, base stations, and users nodes are modeled as a Poisson Point Process. The results showed that the proposed model outperforms the traditional multi-antenna UDN model and its accuracy is confirmed to be similar to the traditional grid model. The obtained results from the proposed and comparable models demonstrate the effectiveness and analytical tractability to study the HetNet performance.