Using Dynamic Sector Antenna Tilting Control for Load Balancing in Cellular

Mobile Communications
L. Du, J. Bigham, L. Cuthbert, C. Parini, P. Nahi
Electronic Engineering, Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK

Abstract- In this paper the potential of a dynamic sector mobile position location capabilities. The position
tilting control scheme is assessed. By intelligent control of location capabilities of the cellular network can be used
the tilting angle for each sectoring antenna according to to determine a set of gain vectors that define the desired
the current call traffic distribution, the whole cellular antenna pattern level in the direction of a cluster of
network performance can be improved by down-tilting the
mobiles. These gain vectors can be thought of as sample
antenna around the source of peak traffic and up-tilting
antennas in adjacent cells to fill in the coverage loss. We points on the desired antenna pattern. A best-fit antenna
perform a constrained optimization of antenna tilting by pattern from the available antenna resource (which
using real-coded genetic algorithms (RCGA), and develop should be kept at minimum in order to keep the cost of
a CDMA cellular system simulator to evaluate the overall the system low) is then synthesized using a combination
improvement of the system performance. A transformation of optimization techniques such as genetic algorithms
of the problem space is used to remove the principal power [2] and reinforcement learning [3].
constraint. Optimization results for two scenarios show
potential capacity improvement of such a system exceeding Our previous work [4] investigated a smart antenna
15%. based approach, which has 12 elements in each base
station antenna array, to evaluate the potential of such a
cell size and shape control scheme. Simulations using
non-uniformly distributed traffic scenarios were
I. INTRODUCTION
performed, and the results showing the system capacity
Previous research on cellular networks has led to can be increased by over 20%.
many schemes to increase the system performance, in
In this paper, instead of using a smart antenna, an original
which balancing the traffic load and use of smart
control scheme using sector antenna tilting is used to change
antenna are two of the most important ones. However,
both the cell size and shape, as illustrated in Fig. 1. Since this
most work related to traffic load balancing only focuses
approach doest not require many hardware upgrades, the cost
on different radio channel allocation schemes, and most
can be even reduced.
work on smart antennas only considers the radio
propagation channels within one cell. These severely
limit their efficiency.
In this work, the concept of adaptive beam forming is
extended to dynamically changing cell size and shapes,
to provide dynamic mobile cellular coverage. Study of
dynamic cell-size control has shown that the system
performance can be improved for non-uniformly
distributed call traffic [1]. However, changing both cell
size and shapes has not been widely studied so far, and
hopefully, it can provide more benefits than costs. The
formation of cells is based upon call traffic needs.
Capacity in a heavily loaded cell can be increased by
contracting the antenna pattern around the source of
Fig. 1. Sector antenna tilting control
peak traffic and expanding adjacent antenna pattern to
fill in the coverage loss.
This paper concentrates on evaluating the potential of such a
An architecture to realize such a base station requires load balance scheme using sector antenna tilting control. The
the capability of approximately locating and tracking problem of constrained optimization on sector antenna tilting
mobiles in order to adapt the system parameters to meet control by the use of RCGA is also investigated, where the
the traffic requirements. The existing generation of main constraint is the base station transmitting power. A
cellular networks has a limited capability of mobile system level simulation is performed in order to evaluate
position location, however the next generation of performance, and results of these simulations are also
cellular networks is expected to have much better presented.
 II. CONSTRAINED OPTIMIZATION OF SECTOR ANTENNA
TILTING
The first step towards intelligent control is to know
which combination of antenna patterns is suitable for a
traffic distribution. Several optimization methods can be
used. In this paper, we explore the use of genetic
algorithms because of their robustness and efficiency.
Transformations of the coordinate space that remove
the central power constraint are also described. Whilst
several transformations may be possible and
mathematically correct, for rapid convergence care has
to be taken to ensure that the transformation does not
distort the space in an unsatisfactory way. The
techniques described here have application beyond the
scope of this application.
A. Using Genetic Algorithms
Genetic Algorithms are search algorithms based on
the mechanics of natural selection and natural genetics.
They combine survival of the fittest among string
structures. In every generation, a new set of structures is
created using parts of the fittest of the previous
generation with occasional random variation (mutation).
Whilst randomized, genetic algorithms are not simple
random walks. They have been shown to efficiently
exploit historical information to find new search points
with expected improved performance [2]. Since genetic
algorithm has already been widely used, we only focus
on how to apply it in our antenna patterns optimization
problem and how to handle the central power constraint.
First, we must design an efficient coding scheme to
represent each possible combination of antenna patterns
as chromosomes. A vector with three gain values,
[ g1 , g 2 , g 3 ] , in which each gain value is coded as a gene,
symbolizes the tilting angles of three sector antennas.
This determines the approximate shape of one base
station antenna pattern. The number of bits for each gain
can be determined by the performance and precision
requirements. Therefore, the chromosome for a region is
formed by combining each set of genes in the region. If
we have M base stations, the chromosome will be like
[[ g1 , g 2 , g 3 ]1 , [ g1 , g 2 , g 3 ]2 , ..., [ g1 , g 2 , g 3 ]M ] .
As many researchers [5][6] have reported,
representing the optimization parameters as numbers,
rather than bit-strings, may have some advantages for
real value optimizations. Since our problem is also a real
value optimization, we use a real-coded genetic
algorithm, with BLX-α [7] crossover and creep
mutation operators. Since the transformation, which is
explained next, handles the central power constraint, it is
not necessary to use other more complicated operators
for our optimization.
It is very difficult to represent the fitness function in
analytical format here, so we use a cellular network
simulator to calculate it for each chromosome. Such a
simulator is described in section III.
B. Constraints Handling Method
The genetic algorithm approach is naturally an
unconstrained optimization technique. When a new
chromosome is created by crossover or mutation in the
searching process, it may not be feasible. Many
constraints handling approaches have already been
proposed [8][9], and recent survey papers classify them
into five categories, namely: use of penalty functions,
special representation and operators, separation of
objectives and constraints, hybrid methods and other
approaches [10]. We investigate a method based on a
transformation between search space and feasible space,
which ensures that all the products of a crossover or
mutation always will be feasible. This falls into the
second category mentioned above. It is simpler, and
usually better, than the methods that only map
unfeasible chromosomes to feasible ones for several
reasons. 1) A very simple search space can be used here,
2) it can be treated without any difference for all the
feasible or unfeasible chromosomes in both spaces, and
3) this transformation can be constructed before starting
optimization. In their paper [11], Koziel S. and
Michalewicz Z. propose a general mapping method,
which is able to map all the points in searching space
into feasible space. It is a numerical method, and
involves a lot of computation in searching the boundary
points. To avoid this we construct a specific mapping
function by analytical means, which is explained next.
The feasible space here is the space includes all the
legitimate values for a chromosome as that described
above F = {( g1 , g 2 , g 3 ) : ( g1 , g 2 , g 3 ) ∈ C}, where the
constrained space C ⊆ R N . A transformation is created
so that the search space of the form
S = { xi ∈ R : 0 ≤ xi ≤ 1} can be used. Each time that we
need to calculate a fitness value for any chromosome
(which is now encoded in terms of the x i ), we map the
chromosome into the feasible space, calculate the fitness
value for new chromosome, and then assign the value to
original chromosome. In this way, we can perform
genetic algorithms without any constraints.
Since the RF transmitting power at a base station can
be expressed as,
3
∑g
1
Ptrans = δ ⋅ '2
i (2.1)
3
i =1
Where gi' is the i − th gain value for the i − th sector
antenna, and δ is a constant.
 Then the main constraint of RF power available at the We can prove that, ∀x ∈ S , there exists g = f ( x) ,
base station, is expressed as, which obeys g ∈ F , and vice versa.
3

∑g
1 To evaluate how much distortion the transformation
Pmin ≤ δ ⋅ '2
i ≤ Pmax (2.2)
3 causes, we use a PDF (Probability Density Function)
i =1
based method [4], which check the output probability of
Where Pmin is the minimum, Pmax is the maximum solution points with uniformly distributed, independent
value of RF power for a base station. They are input. Since the possible locations of the optimum
determined by both physical limit and call traffic density solution are unknown in our case, the ideal
nearby. transformation should generate output points uniformly
distributed in feasible space. Because of the symmetry
After simplification, (2.2) can be expressed as, of feasible space, the marginal PDFs of g i uniformly
3 distributed in feasible space are identical with these of
Pmin ≤ ∑g
i =1
2
i ≤ Pmax (2.3) g j , which i ≠ j and g i is independent of g j . One of
them is shown in Fig. 2, and will be used as the criterion
3 '
Where g i = ⋅ gi . 0.7

δ 0.6

So the feasible space F is, 0.5

 
0.4
3
F =  gi ∈ R : Pmin ≤ ∑ gi2 ≤ Pmax , 0 ≤ g i ≤ 1
PDF
(2.4) 0.3
 i =1 
0.2

In most cases, we will use a 3-dimensional cube as the 0.1

search space S ,
0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

S = { xi ∈ R : 0 ≤ xi ≤ 1} (2.5) g i values

Fig. 2. The marginal PDF of g i uniformly distributed in

We can then define a function f : S  → F to map feasible space, where Pmax = 5.0, and Pmin = 0.5
points in space S into space F . This mapping function for evaluating transformation distortion. Whilst this
must be continuous, in order to satisfy the convergence method is quite coarse, it works well in our cases, since
requirement of genetic algorithms. a little distortion does not affect the performance of GA
Since the feasible space has the format of ∑g 2
i , optimization.
inspired by spherical coordinates, we can let The marginal PDFs of g1 , g 2 , g3 , calculated by
applying (2.8) for uniformly distributed, independent
 g1 = r ⋅ cosθ1
 input xi , are shown in Fig. 3. Although these PDFs are
 g 2 = r ⋅ sin θ1 ⋅ cosθ 2 (2.6)
 g = r ⋅ sin θ ⋅ sin θ different as those in Fig. 2, it will not affect the
 3 1 2 performance of optimization, as GA is random search
algorithm, which can explore the distorted space. This
Then, ∑g i
2
≡ r2 ,
can be seen in Fig. 5 in the next section.
r 2 = x1 ⋅ ( Pmax − Pmin ) + Pmin

1.8

If we let θ1 = x2 (2.7) 1.6

θ = x
 2
1.4
3
1.2

Then we get the mapping function f as, 1

g 2 , g3
PDF

0.8
 π
 g1 = r ⋅ cos( 2 ⋅ x2 ) 0.6
g1

 0.4

 π π
 g 2 = r ⋅ sin( 2 ⋅ x2 ) cos( 2 ⋅ x3 )
0.2

f = (2.8) 0

 π π
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5

 g 3 = r ⋅ sin( ⋅ x2 )sin( ⋅ x3 )
g1, g2, g 3 values

 2 2 Fig. 3. The marginal PDF of g1 , g 2 , g 3 , using transformation

r = x1 ⋅ ( Pmax − Pmin ) + Pmin (2.8), where Pmax = 5.0, and Pmin = 0.5

 III. SIMULATION AND RESULTS
Simulations were performed to test the efficacy of the
approach and the potential of the method. To reduce the
boundary effect of cellular network simulation, a 100
diamond-mesh CDMA cellular network model is used,
as shown in Fig. 4.
0,0 1,0 2,0 3,0 4,0 5,0 6,0 7,0 8,0 9,0
0,1 1,1 2,1 3,1 4,1 5,1 6,1 7,1 8,1 9,1
0,2 1,2 2,2 3,2 4,2 5,2 6,2 7,2 8,2 9,2
0,3 1,3 2,3 3,3 4,3 5,3 6,3 7,3 8,3 9,3
0,4 1,4 2,4 3,4 4,4 5,4 6,4 7,4 8,4 9,4
0,5 1,5 2,5 3,5 4,5 5,5 6,5 7,5 8,5 9,5
0,6 1,6 2,6 3,6 4,6 5,6 6,6 7,6 8,6 9,6
0,7 1,7 2,7 3,7 4,7 5,7 6,7 7,7 8,7 9,7
0,8 1,8 2,8 3,8 4,8 5,8 6,8 7,8 8,8 9,8
0,9 1,9 2,9 3,9 4,9 5,9 6,9 7,9 8,9 9,9
Fig. 4. Cellular Network Model
The following is the list of simulation specifications.
A. Assumptions
• No shadowing or multi-path fading in radio
channel.
• Perfect uplink power control.
• No time delay.
• Each base station has the same capacity and
each traffic unit has the same demand.
• Uplink interference only comes from other
traffic units in same cell.
• Handover is not taken into account.
• Voice activity factor is not taken into account.
B. Propagation model
Usually, the propagation for mobile radio
communications is modeled by path loss, shadowing,
multi-path fading. Since the simulated scenarios are
static, for simplicity, we only take the path loss into
account, so the propagation model can be expressed as
α ij = k ⋅ rij− ρ
Where rij is the distance between i − th traffic unit and
j − th base station, and k and ρ are propagation
constants.
C. System Uplink Capacity
Since we assume perfect power control, the energy
per chip for all traffic units is the same and equal to Ec .
If we only consider the interference from traffic units in
same cell, as in our assumption, the bit energy-to-
effective noise ratio, Eb / I 0 at the base station is then,
Eb GP ⋅ Ec GP
Eb / I 0 = = = (3.2)
( M − 1) Ec ( M − 1) Ec M − 1
The capacity of single cell is given by,
GP
Capacity = M max = +1 (3.3)
( Eb / I 0 )min
Therefore, we can simply let each base station have a
fixed capacity to serve M max traffic units, and each
traffic unit consume a fixed amount, namely demand,
from the base station to which it is subscribed.
The call assignment for i − th traffic unit is performed
according to its received power from j − th base station,
Pji ,
P(Re cv ) ji = α ij ⋅ P(Trans ) j = α ij ⋅ g ji ⋅ PBS (3.4)
Where α ij is propagation factor between i − th traffic
unit and j − th base station, g ji is the gain value at the
direction from j − th base station to i − th traffic unit,
and PBS is the transmitting power for every base station.
Since we assume no time delay, eventually, each base
station only serves the best traffic units. The system
uplink capacity can be calculated by counting the
number of all the served traffic units from the
simulation.
D. Objective function
The objective function is shown as (3.5). The main
objective for our optimization is to maximize system
capacity. However, since we ignore the downlink
interference from other base station, we have to
minimize it by other approximate ways. One simple way
is to minimize the total transmitting power of all the
base stations. It is not as important as the main objective,
so we give it less weight, which comes from empirical
data.
1
Fitness = Capacity (dB ) − ⋅ Power for all BSs ( dB ) (3.5)
5
(3.1)
E. Simulation configuration
• 3000 traffic units in the whole area.
• 100 base stations, each has the capacity to serve 36
traffic units, i.e. (Total Capacity) =120% ⋅ (Total Demands) .
• Cell radius R = 1 , path loss factor ρ = 4.0 , and
propagation model factor k = −70dB .
• 20% of traffic is uniformly distributed in the area.
• Other 80% of traffic is distributed in 40 hot spots
with normal distribution (the mean value for each
hot spots, µ , is uniformly distributed over the whole
area, and the standard deviation, σ = 0.2R ).
F. Results base station agents and antenna agents, global optimized
pattern agreements can be reached according to the
The optimization was performed for two scenarios,
current traffic distribution.
and results are shown in Fig. 5. Some RCGA
optimization parameters are listed in TABLE I.

2800
REFERENCES
Scenario 1
2700 Scenario 2 [1] T. Togo, I. Yoshii, and R. Kohno. “Dynamic cell-
2600
size control according to geographical mobile
distribution in a DS/CDMA cellular system”, The
System Uplink Capacity

2500
With Sector Antenna Tilting Control Ninth IEEE International Symposium on Personal,
2400
Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications,
2300 Volume: 2, p. 677 -681, 1998
2200 [2] D.E. Goldberg, Genetic Algorithms in search,
2100
W ith Fixed (circular) Pattern optimization, and machine learning, Addison-
Wesley, 1989
2000
[3] R. Sutton and A. Barto. Reinforcement Learning:
1900
0 250 500 750 1000 an Introduction. MIT Press, 1998
G eneration
[4] L. Du, J. Bigham, L. Cuthbert, C. Parini and P.
Fig. 5. System uplink capacity by using sector antenna tilting
control
Nahi, “Cell Size and Shape Adjustment Depending
on Call Traffic Distribution”, IEEE Wireless
TABLE I OPTIMIZATION PARAMETERS Communications and Networking Conference,
First method
Orlando, March 2002
[5] D.E. Goldberg. “The theory of virtual alphabets”.
Population Size 1000
In H.P. Schwefel and R. Manner, editors, Parallel
Generation 1000 Problem Solving from Nature, p. 13--22. Springe-
Elite Rate 0.1 Verlag, 1990.
BLX-0.5 Weight 2.0 [6] C.Z. Janikow and Z. Michalewicz. “An
GA Operator

Creep Weight 0.05 experimental comparison of binary and floating

BLX-0.5 Rate
Creep Rate
As Fig. 5 shows, by the use of the load balance
scheme with dynamical sector antenna tilting control,
capacity improvements of over 15% are possible.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
This paper has proposed and investigated a sector
antenna tilting control based load balance scheme,
which can improve the system capacity for non-
uniformly distributed call traffic by dynamic changing
cell size and shape. The results from computer
simulations show that it does increase the system
capacity significantly.
We also describe an efficient way to handle the power
constraints in antenna pattern optimization. The results
show that a proper transformation is very important for
constrained optimization problems.
The results from the GA optimizations have shown
the potential of communication between adjacent base
stations when dynamically computing cell size and
shape. Current work is exploiting this using a
cooperative agent approach. By negotiations between
0.2
point representations in genetic algorithms”. In
R.K. Belew and L.B. Booker, editors, Proceedings
0.005
of the Fourth International Conference on Genetic
Algorithms, p. 31--36, 1991.
[7] L.J. Eshelman, and J.D. Schaffer, “Real-Coded
Algorithms and Interval Schemata”. In L.D.
Whitley (Eds.), Foundations of Genetic
Algorithms, p. 187-202, 1993.
[8] Z. Michalewicz and C.Z. Janikow. “Handling
constraints in genetic algorithms”. In R.K. Belew
and L.B. Booker, editors, Proceedings of the
Fourth International Conference on Genetic
Algorithms, p. 151--157, 1991.
[9] A. Carlos, A Survey of Constraint Handling
Techniques used with Evolutionary Algorithms,
Veracruz, Mexico, 2000
[10] Z. Michalewicz, A survey of Constraint Handling
Techniques in Evolutionary Computation Methods,
Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Conference on
Evolutionary Programming, pages 135-155, The
MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1995
[11] S. Koziel and Z. Michalewicz. Evolutionary
Algorithms, Homomorphous Mappings, and
Constrained Parameter Optimization. Evolutionary
Computation, 7(1): 19--44, 1999.