Locating Gateways for Maximizing Backhaul Network Capacity of 5G Ultra-Dense Networks

In 5G Ultra-Dense Networks, a distributed wireless backhaul is an attractive solution for forwarding traffic to the core. The coverage area is divided into many small cells. A few of these cells are designated as gateways, which are linked to the core by high capacity fiber optic links. Each small cell is associated with one gateway and all small cells forward their traffic to their respective gateway through multi-hop mesh networks. We use a Genetic Algorithm (GA) in combination with K-means clustering algorithm to select gateway locations that maximize the backhaul capacity. We evaluate the performance of our new heuristic, K-GA, in comparison with three different approaches in terms of average number of hops and backhaul network capacity at different node densities through extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Our approach indicates that a combination of GA and K-means provides good results. The scheme is practical and can be easily adapted to the spatial distribution of traffic.