A Fixed Channel Assignment Scheme for

Multihop Cellular Network

Xue Jun Li
Network Technology Research Centre
School of EEE
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
lixuejun@pmail.ntu.edu.sg
Peter Han Joo Chong
Network Technology Research Centre
School of EEE
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
ehjchong@ntu.edu.sg
Abstract: Multihop Cellular Network (MCN) has been proposed
to incorporate the flexibility of ad hoc networks into traditional
cellular networks. Little work has been reported on the channel
assignment for MCN. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility
of applying the characteristics of the hierarchical overlaid
microcell/macrocell architecture and the clustering of MANETs
for channel assignment in TDMA-based MCN. Based on our
deliberated clustered MCN (cMCN) structure with virtual
microcells, we propose a fixed channel assignment (FCA) scheme
for uplink transmission. An exact Markov chain model is
developed to analyze its performance. In addition, an
approximated model, which can reduce the computational load
greatly, with much fewer states is also found. The analytical
models are validated through computer simulation. From the
results, our proposed FCA scheme can reduce the call blocking
probability significantly as compared with the FCA for
conventional single-hop cellular system. The salient contribution
is that our proposed FCA scheme can increase the spectrum
efficiency and the system capacity without increasing
infrastructure cost by introducing the structure of cMCN with
virtual microcells. We also provide some recommendations for
future work on this topic.
Keywords: Multihop Cellular Network, Channel Assignment,
Mobile Ad Hoc Network
I. INTRODUCTION
Multihop Cellular Network (MCN) was proposed to
preserve the benefit from fixed infrastructures and to
incorporate the flexibility of ad hoc networks. The salient
feature of MCN is that communication is not restricted to
single hop but multihop transmission through peer-to-peer
transmission is allowed [1-4]. To achieve such a networking
feature, channel assignment is one of the key factors that
researchers and network planners need to consider.
A number of channel assignment schemes have been
proposed for cellular network and ad hoc network. For cellular
network, fixed channel assignment (FCA) and dynamic
channel assignment (DCA) are the two fundamental channel
assignment schemes [5-7]. For ad hoc network, there are also
two basic channel assignment schemes, namely static channel
assignment and dynamic channel assignment [8]. Few
literatures have studied the channel assignment schemes for
MCN. In [14], an ad hoc GSM (A-GSM) protocol is proposed,
which basically shares the same idea as opportunity-driven
multiple access (ODMA). However, it does not clearly discuss
how the channel assignment is done. In [15], a heuristic slot
assignment scheme, namely Delay-Sensitive Slot Assignment
(DSSA) is proposed for time-division duplex (TDD)
wideband-code division multiple access (W-CDMA) cellular
networks with multihop relaying. The paper provides a
scheme for slots assignment. However, the channel
assignment schemes for TDMA-based MCN have not been
well explored.
This paper makes one major contribution to propose a
channel assignment scheme for MCN. We introduce a
clustered MCN (cMCN) architecture and propose a FCA
scheme for use in cMCN. The proposed FCA makes use of the
characteristics of both microcell/macrocell and clustering in
mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The analytical models
based on Markov chains for uplink transmission are
developed. The analytical results are validated through
computer simulation. The results show that the proposed FCA
scheme in cMCN can increase the frequency reuse and system
capacity without increasing the infrastructure cost. For
example, it does not require any additional installation of new
hardwares such as relay station or base station (BS). To the
authors best knowledge, this study could be the first approach
to provide a solution for channel assignment scheme in MCN,
as well as to provide detailed analytical and simulation results
on the proposed channel assignment scheme.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows:
Section II briefly reviews the techniques of microcellular and
MANET. Section III presents the proposed channel
assignment scheme for MCN. In Section IV, we present the
analytical models. Section V provides the computer simulation
results and validates the analytical models. Section VI
concludes the significant findings and provides some
recommendations for future work.
II. REVIEW OF MICROCELLULAR AND MANETS
A. Microcellular System
In microcellular system [11], the cell size is reduced as
compared to the typical cell size for cellular system. This is
useful to achieve greater spectral reuse, larger system capacity
and the use of low-power hand-held user devices with lighter
weight. In Fig. 1(a), for a macrocell with 10 channels with a
reuse factor of 7 in a cellular network, after implementing the
microcellular structure, one macrocell is divided into seven
microcells and each microcell can be assigned 10 channels.
The spectrum efficiency can be increased by a factor of 7.
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This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2006 proceedings.
However, the microcellular system is not a cost-effective and
flexible solution especially because more BSs need to be
added. In addition, the locations of the new BSs may not be
that simple to be located. We attempt to achieve the
characteristics of microcellular structure in MCN without
increasing the infrastructure cost by applying MANETs
clustering.
B. MANETs Clustering
It has been shown that a flat MANET (each mobile node
shares the same radio capacity) suffers from poor scalability
[12]. When the number of nodes is increased, the throughput
of each node declines rapidly toward zero. Thus, a hierarchical
ad hoc network is required to achieve good scalability. For the
hierarchical ad-hoc network, based on a clustering protocol
[10], it can divide nodes into groups, and perform hierarchical
routing between these clusters. The protocol also establishes
clusterhead and gateway nodes for communication between
clusters. As shown in Fig. 1(b), a clusterhead normally serves
as a local coordinator for its cluster, performing intra-cluster
transmission management, data forwarding and so on.
Clustering in MANETs can facilitate the spatial reuse, make
the routing procedure easier and stabilize the network. In this
paper, each cluster with a clusterhead works like a virtual
microcell.

Figure 1. Illustration of microcell/macrocell and MANETs clustering.
III. PROPOSED FCA SCHEME IN MCN
In this study, for simplicity, we only consider the inter-
macrocell traffic so that every call needs to access to the BS in
the center cell. No intra-microcell or intra-macrocell is
considered so that no call is established between 2 MSs within
a virtual microcell or macrocell. Intra-cell traffic normally
does not introduce severe problem to MCN as it is pointed out
in [1].
A. Clustered MCN
We attempt to apply the characteristics of the hierarchical
overlaid system [9] and the MANETs clustering [10] in MCN.
In our proposed cMCN architecture, a BS and a MS will have
two levels of transmission power, P
data
and P
control
. Refer to
Fig. 2(b), P
data
is used for a BS to transmit data packets
including acknowledgement packets within its coverage area
with a radius of r
m
in the center cell. P
data
is also used for a MS
to transmit data packets for a transmission range of radius, r
m
.
P
control
is used for a BS and a MS to transmit the control
packets within the virtual macrocell with a radius of r
M
so that
a BS is able to exchange the control information with a MS at
the edge of a virtual macrocell. Six virtual microcells with a
coverage radius of r
m
around the center microcell will be
formed as six clusters. A BS will select one of the MSs near
the center of each cluster as a clusterhead. The function of the
clusterhead is to allocate channels to the MSs within its cluster
and determine the routing path. Each virtual microcell can be
divided into two regions: inner half and outer half. The inner
half is near the center microcell. For example, as shown in
Fig. 2(b), for virtual microcell 1, area A is the inner half
region and area B is the outer half region. This structure is
named as seven-cell clustered MCN (cMCN).
B. Fixed Channel Assignment
For uplink transmission, the channel assignment to calls
can be implemented as follows: (i) if a MS originates a new
call from the center microcell; it will occupy one channel only.
If all the channels in the center microcell are occupied, that
new call is blocked. (ii) If a MS originates a new call from the
inner half of the i
th
virtual microcell, it will request a channel
belonging to the i
th
virtual microcell from its clusterhead.
Since the clusterhead will periodically exchange channel
information with the BS, it will know the availability of
channel within its virtual cluster. Then, the clusterhead will
help find a MS in the center cell as a relay station, which will
request one channel belonging to center cell for use. Thus, the
new call will occupy 2 channels. A new call will be blocked if
there is no available channel in the i
th
virtual microcell or
center microcell. (iii) If a MS originates a new call from the
outer half of the i
th
virtual microcell, it will request two
channels belonging to the i
th
virtual microcell from the BS
through the control channel. It is because it takes 2 hops to
reach the center cell. The channel assignment will be handled
by the clusterhead. Then, it will request one more channel
belonging to center cell for the relay MS in the center cell.
Thus, it requires a total of 3 channels. A call will be blocked if
there is no available channel in the center microcell or there
are fewer than 2 channels available in the i
th
virtual microcell.
It means the a call originated from the outer half of the virtual
cell requires three hops to reach the BS as shown in Fig. 2(b).
In a traditional single-hop cellular system as shown in Fig.
2(a), if there are 70 channels in the system, under uniform
FCA with a reuse factor of 7, each cell can be assigned 10
channels. In our proposed scheme, as shown in Fig. 2(b), each
macrocell can form one center microcell and six virtual
microcells. Each microcell (virtual or center microcell) is
assigned a certain number of channels. Since, for inter-cell
traffic of MCN [1], the BS in the center microcell is involved
in all the calls including the surrounding 6 virtual microcells
and its own microcell, more channels should be assigned to
the center microcell in order to reduce the call blocking
probability. If n channels are taken from each of the
surrounding virtual microcells, 6n more channels can be added
to the center microcell. For example, in Section V, we
investigate different combination of (N
0
, N
1
) where N
0
and N
1

are the number of channels assigned to center microcell and
virtual microcell respectively.
We know that the approach of microcellular structure will
require 6 additional BSs for each macrocell, while our
proposed scheme only needs one BS, which is actually the
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This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2006 proceedings.
original BS in the traditional single-hop cellular network with
lower transmission power. The advantage of our proposed
FCA scheme is that the call blocking probability can be
reduced significantly without increasing the number of BS or
relay station.
In this paper, some of the implementation issues, for
example, clustering formation, clusterhead selection and
routing method, for the proposed channel assignment scheme
are out of the scope. But, readers can find more information
from [10].
(a) Traditional Cellular Network (b) Clustered MCN
c1
c2
c3
r
M
r
M
rM
r
m
rm
x
x a new call originated in the outer half of virtual microcell
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
A
B
Boundary of a virtual microcell
Boundary of a virtual macrocell
Boundary of a center microcell
Inner half
Outer half

Figure 2. Traditional network vs. clustered MCN.
IV. ANALYTICAL MODELS
The seven-cell cMCN model shown in Fig. 2(b) is used to
analyze the performance of the proposed FCA scheme. Three
types of new call are originated from the system. They are
calls originated from the center, inner-half and outer-half
microcell as 1-hop, 2-hop and 3-hop calls, respectively.
Because new call arrivals are assumed to be uniform
throughout the whole service area, the call arrival rates are
proportional to the area of corresponding region and given
by 7
1
= ;
2
3 7 = ,
3
3 7 = ; where
1 2 3
, and are the
call arrival rates for center, inner-half, and outer-half
microcell, respectively. Hence the offered traffic are
1 1
= ,
2 2
= , and
3 3
= , where is the call arrival
rate to the macrocell, and 1 is the average call duration.
A. Exact Model
For the seven-cell cMCN, the proposed FCA scheme can
be modeled using a 13-dimensional Markov chain. The center
microcell is assigned with N
0
channels and each of the 6
surrounding virtual microcells is assigned with N
1
channels.
As shown in Fig. 2(b), the seven microcell is numbered with
0, 1, 2, , 6, starting from the center microcell. A state is
defined as
1 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3
).
0 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6
( , , , , , , , , , , , , n n n n n n n n n n n n n To make
the analysis convenient, the states are numbered with an
integer index s, and all the states form a set . For example, a
state s corresponds to a distinct sequence of nonnegative
integers
1 2 3 2 3 2 3
0 1 1 2 2 3 3
2 3 2 3 2 3
4 4 5 5 6 6
( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ),
( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( )
n s n s n s n s n s n s n s
n s n s n s n s n s n s
.
where ( )
j
n s
i
is number of j-hop calls in microcell i at state s.
The permissible states must satisfy the following constraints:
1 2 3 2 3 2 3
0 1 1 2 2 3 3
2 3 2 3 2 3
4 4 5 5 6 6 0
1
0 0
2 3
1
2
1
3
1
2
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
0 ( )
0 ( ) 2 ( ) , for 1, 2, , 6
0 ( ) , for 1, 2, , 6
0 ( ) , for 1, 2, , 6
i i
i
i
N
n s n s n s n s n s n s n s
n s n s n s n s n s n s N
n s N
n s n s N i
n s N i
n s i
+ + + + + +
+ + + + + +

+ =
=
=

(

"
"
"
(1)
A state transition can be caused by one of the following 6
events: an arrival of 1-hop or 2-hop or 3-hop call; a departure
1-hop or 2-hop or 3-hop call. Any state transition will lead to a
change in one of the 13 elements of a state. For example a 3-
hop call arrival in microcell 2 can drive state s
1

1 2 3 2 3 2 3
1 0 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 6 1 6 1
: ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), , ( ), ( ) s n s n s n s n s n s n s n s "
to transit to another state s
2
(if possible)
1 2 3 2 3 2 3
2 0 1 1 1 1 1 2 1 2 1 6 1 6 1
: ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ) 1, , ( ), ( ) s n s n s n s n s n s n s n s + "
By comparing the state number of two states, we can obtain
the transition rates, if one of the 6 possible events can cause
them to transit from one to the other. Applying the global-
balance theory [13], we can obtain one equation for each state.
For example, as shown in Fig. 3, for state s
1
we may have,
1 1 1
5 6 7
1 1 2 3 1 2 3 2 1
3 2 4 3 5 1 6 2 7 3
( )[ 6 6 ] ( )
( ) 6 ( ) 6 ( ) ( ) ( )
s s s
s s s
P s P s
P s P s P s P s P s


+ + + + + = +
+ + + +
(2)
Obviously, the total state probability sums to unity,
( ) 1
s
P s

= (3)
1

2
6
1

3 1
( ) s
3
6
2 1
( ) s
1 1
( ) s
3 7
( ) s
2 6
( ) s
1 5
( ) s
2
6
3
6

Figure 3. Possible transitions for a state s1.
For a state set with m states, we have (m+1) equations,
among which m equations are dependent, and the one from (3)
is independent from the m equations. The (m+1) equations can
be written as
( 1) 1 ( 1) 1
A P B
m m m m
( ( (
=

+ +
(4)
where the format of [A], [P] and [B] are shown below:
11 12 1
1 2
1 1 1
[ ]
m
m m mm
t t t
A
t t t
(
(
(
=
(
(

"
"
# # # #
"
, [ ]
(1)
(2)
( )
P
P
P
P m
(
(
(
=
(
(

#
, [ ]
1
0
0
B
(
(
(
=
(
(

#
. (5)
In matrix [A], there are two types of transition rates:
Transition rates into a state: The element t
ij
(when ij) is the
negative of the transition rate from state j to state i. For state j,
we have
1 2 3
1 0 2 3
( ) ( ) , ( ) ( ) , ( ) ( ) ,
k k
j n j j n j j n j = = =
respectively, where k is the microcell number. Then we have
1 1 1 1 1
0 0 0 1 0 0
2 2 2 2 2
2
3 3 3 3 3
3
,
6,
6 ,
( ) , if ( ) ( ) 1; if ( ) ( ) 1;
( ) , if ( ) ( ) 1; if ( ) ( ) 1;
( ) , if ( ) ( ) 1; if ( ) ( ) 1;
0, otherwise.
k k k k k
ij
k k k k k
n j n j n i n j n i
n j n j n i n j n i
n j n j n i n j n i
t

=
= =
= =
= =

(6)
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This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2006 proceedings.
Transition rates out of a state: The element t
ii
is equal to the
sum of the transition rates out of the state i. For state i, we
have,
1,
m
ii ji
j j i
t t
=
=

(7)
By solving the matrix equation, we can get the matrix [P].
Then, the blocking probability for the corresponding type of
call, 1-hop, 2-hop and 3-hop in each cell is given by
0
1
( )
( ) |
j
i
b
n s N
s
P P s
=

(8)
2 3
1 0
6
2
( ) 2 ( ) ( )
1
1
( ( ) | ( ) | )
6
j
i i i
b
n s n s N n s N
s i s
P P s P s
+ = =
=
= +

(9)
2 3
1 0
6
3
( ) 2 ( ) 1 ( )
1
1
( ( ) | ( ) | )
6
j
i i i
b
n s n s N n s N
s i s
P P s P s
+ =
=
= +

(10)
Then, the average call blocking probability, P
b
, is obtained as
1 1 2 2 3 3 b b b b
P P P P = + + (11)
The exact model may result in excessive long computational
time, especially for large N
0
and N
1
, because each state has 13
integers. To reduce the computational load, we manage to find
an approximated model with much fewer states to analyze the
FCA scheme.
B. Approximated Model
The approximated model is a 7-dimensional Markov chain.
Each state has 7 integer numbers
(
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ), ( ) n s n s n s n s n s n s n s )
where n
i
(s) gives the number of channels occupied in
microcell i at state s. An arrival/departure of different type of
calls will cause state transition with different transition rates.
Maximally, a state has 26 possible transitions.
Compared to the exact model, the approximated model
requires much fewer states. However, we encounter the
difficulty of determining the call departure rate from a given
state. To solve this problem, we first determine all the possible
combinations of 1-hop calls, 2-hop calls and 3-hop calls in 7
microcells for a given state. For example, as shown in Table I,
for a state of (8,2,1,2,1,3,2), we have 5 combinations. In Table
I,
j
i
n represents the number of j-hop calls in microcell i.
Table I. EXAMPLE OF CALL COMBINATIONS

1
0
n
2
1
n
3
1
n
2
2
n
3
2
n
2
3
n
3
3
n
2
4
n
3
4
n
2
5
n
3
5
n
2
6
n
3
6
n
1 0 2 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1
2 0 0 1 1 0 2 0 1 0 1 1 0 1
3 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 3 0 0 1
4 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 2 0
5 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1
Next, the probability of each combination is calculated.
The probability, P
k
, for the k
th
combination is obtained by
,1 ,2 ,2 1
6
' ' ' 3 1 2
1 1
( ) ( ) ( ) ,
6 6
k k i k i
C
C C C
k k k l
l j
p P p p


+
= =
= = (12)
where C is the total number of combinations, C
k,m
is the
number corresponding to the m
th
column and the k
th
row in the
combination Table I. Then, the average number of 1-hop, 2-
hop and 3-hop call in a state can be obtained and are given by
1 2 3
0 ,1 ,2 ,2 1
1 1 1
, ,
C C C
k k i k i k i k i k
k k k
E n C P E n C P E n C P
+
= = =
( ( ( = = =

(13)
Similarly, the call departure rate can be estimated
as [ ]
j j
i i
E n , where j is the hop number and i the microcell
number. Hence, the call departure rates from a given state can
be calculated approximately using the above procedures.
The transition rate matrix is constructed similarly as what
we have done in the exact model. We can solve the matrix
equations and obtain the probability for each state. Thus, the
blocking probability for a given type of call in a microcell can
be found by similar equations as (8)-(10). And the average call
blocking probability can be calculated by equation (11).
V. SIMULATION RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
The simulated system consists of one macrocell which is
divided into 7 microcells. Call arrives according to a Poisson
process with a call arrival rate per macrocell. Call durations
are exponentially distributed with a mean of 1 . Each
simulation runs until 10000000 calls are processed. Only
uplink transmission is considered. The 95% confidence
intervals are within 10% of the average values shown.
For the seven-cell cMCN, we first look at the performance
of uniform FCA, where each (center or virtual) microcell has
equal number of channels with (10, 10). As shown in Fig. 4,
the performance of cMCN with (10, 10) has the same P
b

compared to the traditional single-hop cellular network, where
a cell has the same coverage area as the marcocell, with 10
channels. This is expected because in the cMCN, every
multihop call in the surrounding 6 virtual microcells will
require one channel from the center microcell to access to the
BS. In other words, the center cell needs to support all the
traffic from all 7 microcells. Since N
1
is large enough in the
virtual microcells, no call is blocked due to insufficient
channels in the virtual cells. Thus, the bottleneck of the
performance depends on N
0
in the center cell.
Table II shows the P
b
obtained from simulation, the exact
model and the approximated model for the cMCN with
N
0
=N
1
=10. It can be seen that the analytical results match
closely with the simulation results.
Table II. Pb RESULTS FOR N0=10 AND N1=10
Erlangs Simulation Exact Model Approximated Model
1.0 2.11e-007 2.12e-007 2.11e-007
2.0 3.69e-005 3.70e-005 3.65e-005
3.0 7.96e-004 7.95e-004 7.95e-004
4.0 5.35e-003 5.35e-003 5.35e-003
5.0 1.84e-002 1.84e-002 1.84e-002
6.0 4.33e-002 4.33e-002 4.33e-002
7.0 7.90e-002 7.90e-002 7.83e-002
8.0 1.22e-001 1.22e-001 1.21e-001
9.0 1.68e-001 1.68e-001 1.68e-001
10.0 2.14e-001 2.15e-001 2.15e-001
Next, we study the performance of cMCN by increasing the
N
0
in the center microcell and reducing the N
1
in the 6 virtual
microcells. Fig. 4 shows the results of different channel
combinations: (16, 9), (22, 8), (28, 7). From the results, it can
be seen that our proposed FCA scheme is able to reduce the P
b

significantly as compared to the single-hop cellular network. If
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This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2006 proceedings.
P
b
is set at 1%, our proposed scheme can support about 2
times more traffic. For example, the cMCN with (22, 8)
supports 9.6 Erlangs, whereas a traditional single-hop cell
with 10 channels supports only 4.5 Erlangs.
We also notice that the N
1
in the surrounding virtual
microcells will limit the quality-of-service (QoS) of the
multihop call of inter-cell traffic. Beyond the optimum
combination, if we further reduce N
1
and increase N
0
, the
performance will be degraded because more calls will be
blocked in the virtual cells. Furthermore, the results obtained
from the approximated model can provide a good estimation
for the exact model. This again validates the correctness of
both analytical models.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
10
-4
10
-3
10
-2
10
-1
10
0
Offered Traffic (Erlangs)
C
a
l
l
B
l
o
c
k
i
n
g

P
r
o
b
a
b
il
it
y

(
P


b
)
Exact
Simulation
Approximated
N=10 for Traditional Cellular Network (10, 10)
(16, 9)
(22, 8)
(28, 7)

Figure 4. Performance of the proposed FCA for MCN.
VI. CONCLUSION
The feasibility of applying the characteristics of
hierarchical overlaid microcell/macrocell structure and
MANETs clustering in MCN is studied. Based on the
introduced clustered MCN structure, a fixed channel
assignment scheme is proposed. To analyze the proposed
channel assignment, two analytical models, exact model and
approximated model, are developed based on Markov chain
for a seven-cell clustered MCN. The analytical results are
validated through computer simulation and they match with
each other closely. The proposed FCA scheme can increase
the spectrum efficiency significantly without increasing the
infrastructure cost as compared to the microcellular systems.
Performance of our proposed channel assignment scheme for
MCN shows that we can improve the system capacity greatly
by increasing the number of channels assigned to the center
microcell by decreasing the number of channels in the
surrounding microcells. With optimum channel combination
in the clustered MCN, the capacity can be doubled as
compared to traditional single-hop cellular network.
One of the limitations of this scheme is that a MS in each
virtual microcell is selected as a clusterhead to be responsible
for the channel allocation within its cluster. The clusterhead
can reduce the traffic load between MSs and BS. However, the
power consumption of this MS is very large. Therefore, the
BS needs to look for another MS to replace the exiting
clusterhead from time to time in order not to drain all the
power from the current clusterhead MS. Also, how to find a
suitable MS as a clusterhead is not an easy task. Alternatively,
the BS can form the virtual clusters without the clusterheads.
However, it may cause a lot of control traffic between the MSs
and the BS using the control channel. This is because a MS
inside the cluster needs to communicate with the BS through
the control channel whenever a MS requests a channel for a
new call or during handover. We also notice that other
network protocols, such as routing protocols, medium access
control protocols, cluster formation, handover technique and
mobility effect may degrade our proposed channel assignment
scheme. In addition, the performance may be different if the
intra-microcell and intra-macrocell traffic are considered.
Thus, future work in this topic needs to consider the above
issues. However, this paper is expected to provide some
promising improvement of MCN over traditional single-hop
cellular network in a TDMA-based cellular network for future
study.
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1-4244-0357-X/06/$20.00 2006 IEEE
This full text paper was peer reviewed at the direction of IEEE Communications Society subject matter experts for publication in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2006 proceedings.