Spectral Efficiency Analysis of the Decoupled Access for Downlink and Uplink in Two-Tier Network

This paper analyzes the efficacy of decoupled wireless access in a two-tier heterogeneous network. The decoupled wireless access and its performance benefits have been studied in different scenarios recently. In this paper, an in-depth analysis on its efficacy from spectral efficiency perspective is provided. To achieve this task, (i) new closed-form expressions for probability of association of user equipment with different tiers employing different frequency bands (i.e., microwave and millimeter wave) with different pathloss exponents are derived using univariate Fox's H-functions; (ii) Distributions of the distance to the serving base stations are also derived; (iii) Exact expressions of spectral efficiency for different association cases are further obtained using bivariate Fox's H-functions. Furthermore, rigorous simulation results are provided which validate the aforementioned analytical results. In addition to that, a detailed discussion on the decoupling gain of decoupled wireless access and its efficacy is also provided. Finally, despite the improvement provided by the decoupled wireless access, which is evident from the results presented in this paper, a few questions are raised on its pragmatic value.