Wireless backhaul allows densification of mobile networks without incurring additional fiber deployment cost. This, in turn, leads to high spatial reuse, which is a significant tool to meet increasing wireless demand in 5G networks. Integrated access and backhaul (IAB), where access and backhaul network share the same standard wireless technology (e.g. 5G new radio (NR) standard), allows interoperability among different IAB manufacturers and flexible operation between access and backhaul. This paper investigates joint resource allocation and relay selection in a multi-hop IAB network to maximize geometric mean of UE rates. Our study illustrates several advantages and features of IAB. First, IAB significantly improves UE rates compared to access only networks and can provide an important intermediate solution during incremental fiber deployment. Second, IAB networks with optimal mesh outperforms IAB networks with RSRP based spanning tree both in terms of rate and latency.

Accepted in Infocom 2018 Workshop (mmSys 2018)