Delay guaranteed joint user association and channel allocation for fog radio access networks

IEEE In the Fog Radio Access Networks (F-RANs), the local storage and computing capability of Fog Access Points (FAPs) provide new communication resources to address the latency and computing constraints for delay-sensitive applications. To achieve the ultra-low latency, a novel joint user association and channel allocation scheme is proposed in this paper, where the FAPs are clustered from a user-centric perspective. The delay performance is improved regarding both the control signaling procedure and the data transmission procedure. Specifically, the multiple access interference (MAI) between users is analyzed, where the closed-form expression for the effective rate of a typical user with multiple FAP connections and arbitrary interfering users is obtained. With the consideration of MAI, the proposed distributed joint user association and channel allocation algorithm provides a guaranteed delay violation probability. Moreover, the distributed algorithm can be conducted on individual FAPs, whose calculation is simplified by look-up tables. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of providing statistical delay performance guarantee including both average delay and delay bound violation probability, which demonstrates its superiority in supporting delay-sensitive applications in F-RANs.