| Summary: | Heterogeneous cellular networks (HetCNets) offer a promising solution to cope with the current cellular coverage crunch. Due to the large transmit power disparity, while following maximum power received (MPR) association scheme, a larger number of users are associated with macro-cell BS (MBS) than small-cell BSs (SBSs). Therefore, an imbalance load arrangement takes place across the HetCNets. Hence, using cell range expansion-based cell association, we can balance the load across the congested MBS. However, using MPR association scheme, users' offloading leads to two challenges: 1) macro-cell interference, in which the MBS interferes with the offloaded users, and 2) coupled downlink-uplink cell association, in which a random user associates with a single tier's base station (BS) both in uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) directions. This paper aims to address these problems while considering a two-tier scenario consisting of small-cell and macro-cell tiers. For the MBS interference mitigation, we employ a reverse frequency allocation (RFA) scheme. Besides coupled DL-UL association (Co-DUA), this paper also highlights the notion of decoupled DL-UL association (De-DUA). In De-DUA, a random user associates with two different tiers' BSs, i.e., with one tier's BS in the DL direction and with the other tier's BS in the UL direction. Our results illustrate that, in comparison with the Co-DUA, De-DUA with RFA employment achieves a better coverage performance.
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