User Association in Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks with Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces

In this paper, we introduce a new load balancing user association scheme for millimeter wave (mmWave) cellular networks in which intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is applied in the cellular network to improve the coverage region of each cell and mitigate mmWave vulnerability to non-line of sight (N-LoS) paths. The user association scheme improves network performance significantly by adjusting the interference according to the association. We study the IRS-assisted mmWave cellular network where one IRS is deployed to assist in the communication from the base station (BS) to mobile users (MUs) in each cell. We balance BS loads and maximize a network utility by optimizing the user association with a matching game. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the throughput compared to conventional user association techniques.