A Basis for 3-D Cellular Networks

Jean Carle, Jean-Frtdtric Myoupo, and David SemC LaRIA, Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique dAmiens FacultC de MathCmatiques et dInformatique, Universitt de Picardie-Jules Verne 33, rue Saint Leu, 80039 Amiens Cedex, France { carle,myoupo,seme} @ 1aria.u-picardie.fr

Abstract
In this work, we propose to extend the standard concept of planar cellular networks into space. Indeed, in cellular networks the trend is to have a smaller cells to deserve the growing number of communications. Smaller are the cells, and more important is the third dimension because more efJicient is the model.
Keywords: Honeycomb Mesh, Hexagonal Mesh, Mobile Computing, Cellular Network, wireless.

Figure 1. The need of the third dimension.

1. Introduction
This paper is an attempt to use the third dimension in cellular networks. Omni-directional antennas propagate radio waves along spheres. Authors of [lo] try to define a 3-D model for ad-hoc networks, but they use cubes as approximation of spheres. There are very few papers that deal about the third dimensionnal cellular networks. Usually, cellular networks are studied on plane (e.g. [ I , 12, 13, 141). They are represented by honeycomb meshes. Each hexagon corresponding to one cell managed by a base station ( B S )on its center. Within wide area networks such as macro-cellular networks, this is a good representation because we can easily approximate the area by a plane. But the number of frequencies is not unlimited, and to satisfied the growing number of mobile communications, an answer is the use of micro-, nano-, or pico-cellular networks associated with a co-channel reuse method. Smaller are the cells, and more important is the third dimension. So, it would be better to take the height into account. For instance, to create a cellular network in a building as in fig. l , it makes no sense to have a plane cellular network. It would be better to have antennas placed in the three dimensions. This paper first, presents, in section 2, some explanations about the reason why hexagons tessellation are used in the theory of cellular networks. Section 3 describes the 3-D cellular networks used for this work. We also discuss about the

frequency reuse mechanism and channel allocation schemes in section 4. Finally, conclusion and further works are given in the last section.

2. Preliminary
In a plane, waves are propagated along circles. The circle corresponds to the power threshold over it, the received signal is too weak. Indeed, the power of a transmitted signal decreases with distance from the source. The average received power at distance d from a transmitter is approx-OL, where POis the power received at imated by PO a close-in reference point in the far filled region of the antenna at a small distance d~ from the transmitting antenna. cy is the path loss exponent which depends on the physical environment. In free space environment, cy = 2, and for an indoor environment, cy x 3.5 [ l l , 141. Hence, the position of each base station is important to minimize the Carrier-to-Interference Ratio (CZR). To cover a given zone A, it is necessary to partially overlap cells by some others. Indeed, as it is shown in figure 2, if cells are at most tangent, then there exists some empty spaces between cells in which a transmitting signal from any BS is under the acceptable power threshold. To cover the biggest area with the minimum number of BS without empty spaces, and to minimize the interference

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Figure 4. hexagons. Figure 2. Empty spaces with tangent circle area.

Cells

are

approximated

by

problem between cells, we need to find a tessellation of the plane. Assuming all BS have the same power, we can use regular polygons. It is well known that there exists three possible tessellations of a plane with regular polygons of the same kind: square, triangle, or hexagon corresponding to dividing a plane into regular squares (fig. 3a), triangles (fig. 3b), and hexagons (fig. 3c) respectively. Triangular plane tessellation is called hexagonal mesh, while hexagonal plane tessellation is called honeycomb mesh ([2,5, 151). The term honeycomb is the reference to regular hexagons stems from shape of cells in a bee hive.
n

it with the six neighboring hexagons, we obtain a triangular plane tessellation also called hexagonal mesh. In the same way, if you consider a hexagonal mesh, you can obtain the previous honeycomb mesh by represented each triangle as a vertex, and by linked it to its neighbors.

Figure 5. Duality between hexagonal and honeycomb mesh.

a)

C)

Figure 3. The three regular plane tessellations: with squares, triangles, or hexagons.

Since we want to use the third dimension in nano-cellular networks, we need to generalize the hexagonal mesh to a 3D hexagonal mesh.

3.3-D cellular networks

In general, hexagons are used to approximate circular cells. This is mainly because of the following theorem: In this section, we describe a 3-D hexagonal cellular network as an extension of triangular plane tessellation. See [3] for more details about this structure.

Theorem 1 Hexagon is the regular polygon that minimize

the covering problem.

3.1. Vectors definition

Since 2-D hexagonal meshes are obtained from the triangular tessellation, one could think that its generalization to 3-D is straightforward using tetrahedra. It is not the case, because a space can be only filled with cubes as proved in [6]. To show that, let suppose that we have a set of equal tetrahedra fitting together to fill all space just once, so that every face of each tetrahedron belongs to the other tetrahedron. Project edge normally to a plane as in figure 6. A set of equal triangles must fill it, so that every line of each

Proof: A circle of radius R, have an area of n R 2 .A biggest triangle, square, or hexagon you can put in the previous circle have an area equal to 2R2, or respectively. <2< < K, so the shape that best overlapped the circle area is the hexagon (fig. 4).

w,

There exists a duality between hexagonal and triangular plane tessellation. As shown on figure 5, by considering a base station and its hexagonal cell as a vertex, and connect

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belongs to the other triangle. But the projected angle a is equal to 70.529", and -M 5.1. This means that the space cannot be filled with tetrahedra. Hence we cannot obtain 3-D hexagonal meshes from tetrahedra. In spite of this, we can, however, use tetrahedron to highlight particular vectors that form a basis for building 3-D hexagonal meshes. Hexagonal plane tessellation is called honeycomb mesh ([2, 5 , 151). The term honeycomb is the reference to regular hexagons stems from shape of cells in a bee hive.
I I
I

Figure6. Projection of a tetrahedra on a plane.

a x 70.529"

Ipx

54.736"

Indeed, as shown in figure 7, vectors are those perpendicular to tetrahedron faces. With coordinates axes as defined in the same figure (the 3-D normal X-, Y-, and Z-axes), we obtain the following four vectors:

Figure 7. Four vectors defined using tetrahedra.

3.2. Definition of 3-D hexagonal meshes

Moreover XI XZ X3 = - X 4 , so only three vectors are needed to define 3-D hexagonal meshes (or 3-D cellular network). We have chosen to lose the X4-vector. Thus, a node can be coded by an integer triples (u1 ,u2, us) corresponding to 211 u2Xz u3X3 in the normalized X - , 1x Y - , and Z-axes of figure 7. As in 2-D space, we can rotate the three vectors without loss of generality such that they are identical to the normalized axes (X, Z). This is Y, the reason why, starting at this point, all figures are drawn in this coordinate system and further explanations use this representation too. As in 2-D, we define some vectors: Edges parallel to X , Y , and Z-axes are denoted z+ = ( l , O , O ) , y+ = (0,1,0) and z+ = (O,O, 1) in the positive direction, and z-(-l,O,O),y-(Oj-l,O) andz-(0,0, -1) inthenegative direction respectively. Diagonal vectors are defined as follow: z y + = 2+ y+ = (1,1,0), zz+ = z+ z+ = (1,0, l ) , yz+ = y+ z+ = (0,1, l ) , zy- = z- y- = (-1, -1,O), zz- = zz - = ( - l , O , -l), and yz- = y- z- = (0, -1, -1).

+ +
+

With the previously defined vectors, a 3-D hexagonal mesh of size t can be defined as a generalization of the definition for the planar hexagonal mesh.
0

A node N = (211, U Z , ug) belongs to a 3-D hexagonal mesh (or 3-D cellular network) of size t if and only if it verifies one of the following properties:

-t < u1,u2,u3 < t andVi,j, i # j , ui.uj 2 0, - Iu1I+(uZI+Iu3/ < t a n d 3 i , j , i # j , ui.uj < 0.

+ +

This means that a node belongs to a 3-D hexagonal mesh of size t if its coordinates are all of the same sign and are in a cube of size t (i.e. 3-D hexagonal mesh is limited by horizontal and vertical planes), or one coordinate has an opposite sign to the two other and then, 3-D hexagonal mesh is limited by a diagonal plane.
0

Two nodesA = ( ~ 1 ~ ~ 2 and B = )( u ~ , u ~ ,are~ ) ~ 2 ~ 3 u connected if and only if their coordinates verify one of these properties:

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- I ~ : - ~ Z L ~ ( + I ~ ; - ~ ~ I + I . U ~ - ' Z =Q I : thisisfor L1 links parallel to an axis. There exists a unique i

= 1, in the other hand u = j i#j. 3 i , j (U: -u()(u> -uj)= 1 : this is fordiagonal

such that li u

links. Example : there is a link between (O,O,O) and (11110)or (-1,-110) butnotbetween (O,O,O) and (1,-110) or (-ll'llO).

Remark : Each of the planes X = 0, Y = 0, 2 = 0 (i.e. when the third coordinate is 0) contains a 2D hexagonal mesh of size t . Figure 8 exhibits a 3-D hexagonal mesh of size 2 with orthogonal axes. Figure 9. Hamiltonian cycle (bold) into 3-D cellular network of size 2.

4. Frequency reuse
The frequency reuse mechanism is an answer to the following problem: how to deserve a given zone with a fixed bandwidth, and with a number of users which can be increased? Indeed, the power of a frequency wave decreases with the distance from the source. So, if two cells are far enough, we can used the same frequency in these two cells. Cells which use the same frequency wave are called cochannel cells. The distance between a cell and one of its nearest co-channel cells is called the reuse distance. A set of cells in which each cell is assigned a different frequency is called a pattern or a cluster. By placing cluster side by side, we can cover an unlimited zone with a fixed number of frequencies. Smaller are the size of the cells, more dense can be the zone.

Figure 8. 3-D hexagonal mesh of size 2 with orthogonal axes system.

3.3. Topological properties

Topological properties include (but are not limited to) degree, number of nodes, and diameter. The degree of an interconnection network is defined as the maximum node degree. The diameter is the maximum of the shortest distances between any two nodes. More details can be found in [ ] 4. Degree Number of nodes (=n) Diameter
: 12

: 3t3 - 3t2 2t - 1 : 3 ( t - 1) M 2.08fi

Hamiltonian cycle : A Hamiltonian cycle is a closed path which goes through all nodes in a mesh only once. The 3-D cellular network of size 2 have a Hamiltonian cycle represented with bold line on figure 9.

Example: Assume we have to cover an area of radius R. Let N = 7 be the number of allocated channels in this area (figure 10 right). We also assume that we use exactly one communication per channel (FDMA), and without a reuse mechanism, a maximum of N communications could be satisfied simultaneously. But by distributing frequencies on smaller cells of radius T , then a maximum of = (ratio between floor areas) could be done simultaneously (see figure 10 left). For instance, with R = 5 km and T = 500 m, 2 = 100 communications siit is possible to satisfying multaneously. In the same way, by considering space in place of plane, a spherical area of radius R can be divided by smaller 3 sphere of radius T . In this case, a maximum of ( f ) (ratio between volumes) communications can be done simultaneously instead of N without frequency reuse mechanism.

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that the reuse distance corresponds to the diameter of the cluster, and the size of the associated 3-D hexagonal mesh corresponds to the radius of this cluster.

4.2. Channel assignment

The challenge is to find the best way to allocate channels into cells to maximize system capacity and quality while minimizing interference between cells (co-channel interference) and neighbor channels (adjacent channel interference). The channel allocation problem can be viewed as a generalization of the graph coloring problem', Therefore is a NP-hard problem [8]. This means an algorithm that always find an exact solution for any cases will not terminated in polynomial time. So, the frequency assignment problem can usually be solved only approximately. A numerous of channel assignment strategies have been developed to achieve these objectives [ 111. They can be classified into two different channel allocation schemes: Fixed Channel Allocation (FCA), and Dynamic Channel Allocation (DCA). In a fixed channel allocation strategy, a subset of channels is assigned to each cell permanently (until a new frequency planning process). FCA is one of the simplest and best strategy for heavy and uniform load cells. In micro-cellular network, traffic condition and users distribution may change rapidly. In this case, a better solution is to use a dynamic channel allocation scheme, in which channels are assigned to new calls on demand, according to CIR constraint. DCA strategies are more flexible and have a better traffic adaptability, but it is less efficient in high traffic load conditions. Hybrid channel allocation schemes combine both the fixed and dynamic channel allocation. A subset of channels is associated to cells, whereas some channels are placed in a global pool in case of shortage. It is obvious that all these strategies can also be used with our 3-D model because they are not dependent of the cellular model. Since 3-D cellular network is oriented to local environment, like office buildings and others, we can assume that the traffic is uniform. FCA scheme with borrowing channels for particular cases should be acceptable. In any cases, we need to have an identification number (Id) of each cell that permit to maintain a channel allocation table up-to-date. Considering a FCA, we can identify cells in one cluster only, and then replicate the identification scheme within the other clusters. Indeed, in a FCA scheme, all channels are allocated in one cluster, and cluster is replicated over the coverage area. Example is given figure 10 left. In this example, the cluster have seven cells, and each cell contains $ of the total number of available channels. Cells with the same Id are also with the same
'In a graph coloring problem, we want to coloring all nodes of a graph with the minimum number of colors in such a way that any two linked nodes have a different color

Figure 10. Frequency reuse mechanism.

With R = 50 m and

= 5 m, it is possible to satisfying

( = 1000 communications simultaneously. So, for the same ratio between the size of the cells (10 in this example), the possible number of users is much more important by considering space instead of plane. In other word, it is needed to have less channels to deserve the same number of communications.
4.1. Reuse distance
By using the previously defined coordinate system, we can describe the co-channel cells of a given cell. Each cell is represented by its base station in its center. The 12 neighboring cells of the cell (0, 0 , O ) are at coordinates:

y)

( L O , O ) , (LLO), ( - L O , O ) , ( O , L O ) , (1,0,1), ( O , - L O ) ,

(-L-1,0), (-1,0,-1), (070, I), (0,1, I), (090, -11, (0, -1, -1).
Since the reuse distance is the same in all directions, the number of cells equidistant to (O,O,O) is equal to 12 (i.e. the degree of the associated 3-D hexagonal mesh). Therefore, for a reuse distance equal to d, co-channel cells are of coordinates:

(40, 01, (4d, 01, (-4 0701, (-4 -4 01, (0, d, O ) , (d, (0, -4 01, (-4 0, - 4 7 (O,O, 4, (0, d, 4 , @,O, -4, (0, -4 -4.
To find the co-channel cells corresponding to a given cell ( a ,b, c), we only need to shift the previous co-channel cells by adding a , b, and c to each coordinate respectively.

( a + 4 b, 4, a ,b + 4 4,( a ,b, c + 4 , ( ( a d, b d, c), ( a d, b, c d ) , ( a ,b

- d, b , c ) , ( u , b - 44, ( u , b , c- 4 , ( U - d, b - d, c), ( a - d, b, c - d ) , ( a ,b - d, c - d).

(U

+ d, c + d ) ,

Knowing the reuse distance, we can compute the maximum cluster size. It is approximatively equal to the half of the reuse distance. This can be explained by the fact

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subset of channels. In our 3-D model, for a fifteen cells cluster, corresponding to the 3-D hexagonal mesh of size 2 (fig. 9), we can use the Hamiltonian cycle previously defined to identified all cells into the cluster. Starting with Id 1 for the (0, 0,O)cell, 2 for the (O,O, 1)-cell, 3 for the (1,0, 1)-cell, and so on along the cycle until reaching all cells in the cluster. When the number of node is fixed in advance, then nodes can be named by the mobile switch controller which managed all the BS in the area.

5. Conclusion and further works

In this paper, we have presented the basis for a new cellular network in which the height is taken into account. We show that for the same floor area, we have the possibility to satisfy much more communications than with standard model. It remains a lot of study to do In order to make this model usable. What is the size over which the plane model is more interesting than the 3-D one? The number of possible cells within a cluster is also an open problem. Indeed, the number of nodes in a 3-D hexagonal mesh of size t is 3t3- 3t2+ 2t - 1(c.f. [4]). Assuming the reuse distance is equal to d, the size of a cluster is then Thus, the number of cells in a cluster is: equal to

F.

3(F)3-3(T) l d+l +2--1+ d 2

- 3d3 + 3d2 + 5d - 3
8

The only clusters that are taken into account are those with
a 3-D hexagonal shape. The resulting cluster are with 1, 15, 59, or 783 cells, for d = 1,3,5, 7 respectively. The quesor tion is to know if this is the only possible cluster with this model. If not, other solutions should be described. Techniques such as cell splitting, sectoring, and others capacity improvement shall be searched. The channels allocation plan should also be studied in details. It should be interesting to develop some planning tools. Since this model uses the third dimension and thus seems adapted for indoor environment. As for outdoor, indoor propagation is dominated by reflection, diffraction, and scattering [7,9, 141. All these physic problems have to be yet investigated for best quality.

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