SCENE: Serving cluster formation in cEll-free dyNamic environments

This paper introduces SCENE (Serving Cluster formation in cEll-free dyNamic Environments), a novel optimization model for serving cluster formation in Cell-Free massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output networks. SCENE addresses the challenge of supporting heterogeneous service requirements - including critical Internet of Things (IoT) and latency-sensitive services as well as regular broadband applications - under dynamic network conditions. Unlike traditional approaches that rely on iterative refinement algorithms, SCENE performs one-shot serving cluster formation, eliminating the overhead of successive optimization loops. This innovation leads to significantly lower computational complexity and faster execution times while preserving service quality. Simulation results show that SCENE achieves superior performance in both average and 90%-likely spectral efficiency compared to state-of-the-art baselines, while demonstrating strong robustness under varying traffic profiles and pilot scarcity.