QoS guarantee in self-backhauled LTE mesh networks

LTE is deployed in most countries and continuously evolving to match new user requirements. While it is expected to support 5G deployments for outdoor and long range communications, it will also be used for Public Safety services in major countries. Among that, new scenarios call for wider networks on the move relying on dynamic meshing of the base stations. Leveraging the LTE air interface for base station meshing is an appealing idea but is not that straight forward to ensure high performances. In this article we study and evaluate scheduling strategies for multi-hop LTE mesh networks relying on the LTE relay channel. We first present the LTE relay channel and the scheduling problems of in-band LTE backhauling. We then propose a practical cross-layer method for resource allocation in order to meet QoS requirements of specific flows in such a network. We finally evaluate our proposed method in realistic scenarios. We show the effectiveness of the approach compared to a legacy method for meeting QoS requirements of real-time flows while improving throughput of elastic flows.