Characterizing Coverage and Downlink Throughput of Cloud Empowered HetNets

In this letter, we introduce the concept of cloud empowered heterogeneous networks. We propose a simple yet efficient association mechanism for the selection of a serving remote radio head (RRH) for a desired mobile user (MU). We introduce the concept of user centric clustering which improves the user throughput by contributing on several fronts. Employing well established tools from stochastic geometry, we characterize the downlink coverage probability for the MU. The coverage probability is in turn employed to characterize the attainable throughput at a certain desired reliability constraint. Simulation results are presented to indicate the gains experienced by employing additional tiers in a cloud radio access network(C-RAN). Such gains are attributed to the distributed diversity which provides a power gain and hence increases the effective received SNR.