Relay-Assisted and QoS Aware Scheduling to Overcome Blockage in mmWave Backhaul Networks

In the scenario where small cells are densely deployed, the millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless backhaul network has been widely used. However, mmWave is easily blocked by obstacles, and how to forward the data of the blocked flows is still a significant challenge. To ensure backhauling capacity, the quality of service (QoS) requirements of flows should be satisfied. In this paper, we investigate the problem of optimal scheduling to maximize the number of flows satisfying their QoS requirements with relays exploited to overcome blockage. To achieve a practical solution, we propose a relay-assisted and QoS aware scheduling scheme for the backhaul networks, called RAQS. It consists of a relay selection algorithm and a transmission scheduling algorithm. The relay selection algorithm selects non-repeating relays with high link rates for the blocked flows, which helps to achieve the QoS requirements of flows as soon as possible. Then, according to the results of relay selection, the transmission scheduling algorithm exploits concurrent transmissions to satisfy the QoS requirements of flows as much as possible. Extensive simulations show RAQS can effectively overcome the blockage problem, and increase the number of completed flows and network throughput compared with other schemes. In particular, the impact of relay selection parameter is also investigated to further guide the relay selection.