Rate Control under Finite Blocklength for Downlink Cellular Networks with Reliability Constraints

Abstract: Coming cellular systems are envisioned to open up to new services and applications with high reliability and low latency requirements. In this paper we focus on the rate allocation problem in downlink cellular networks with Rayleigh fading and stringent reliability constraints. We propose a rate control strategy to cope with those requirements making use only of topological characteristics of the scenario, the reliability constraint and the number of antennas that are available at the receiver side. Numerical results show the feasibility of the ultra-reliable operation when the number of antennas increases, and also that our results remain valid even when operating at short blocklength as far as the amount of information to be transmitted is not too small.