Evaluation of the potential for energy saving in macrocell and femtocell networks using a heuristic introducing sleep modes in base stations

Abstract

In mobile technologies two trends are competing. On the one hand, the mobile access network requires optimisation in energy consumption. On the other hand, data volumes and required bit rates are rapidly increasing. The latter trend requires the deployment of more dense mobile access networks as the higher bit rates are available at shorter distance from the base station. In order to improve the energy efficiency, the introduction of sleep modes is required. We derive a heuristic which allows establishing a baseline of active base station fractions in order to be able to evaluate mobile access network designs. We demonstrate that sleep modes can lead to significant improvements in energy efficiency and act as an enabler for femtocell deployments.

Energy-Efficient On–Off Power Control of Femto-Cell Base Stations for Cooperative Cellular Networks

“…Through the shutdown of BSs, electricity consumption can be reduced significantly because more than half of total electricity consumption in MCSs is caused by BSs. Consequently, on-off power control schemes for BS have been extensively studied in previous literature, especially in the context of GCNs [1,3,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. The on-off power control schemes for BSs can be divided into two categories: which are statistical scheme and adaptive scheme.…”

“…Due to its importance, the adaptive on-off power control scheme has recently been the subject of extensive investigation [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. In [21], the on-off state of BS which operates based on the renewable generation, e.g., wind power, was optimized where the main objective is to minimize the on-grid power consumption.…”

“…The coverage probability and EE of MBS were analyzed using the stochastic geometry in [15], which reveals that the strategic sleeping where MBS is turned off is based on the amount of traffic load, gives better performance compared with the random sleeping of MBS. The authors of [16,17] considered the distance between the FBS and mobile station (MS) in the determination of which FBS to shut down, i.e., the operation of FBS which is far from MSs, is halted. Furthermore, in [18], the adaptive FBS switching-off scheme was considered for the indoor FBS in which the operation of redundant FBS is stopped by examining the achievable throughput.…”

“…The most straightforward way to improve the EE of MCSs is to simply turn off base stations (BSs) whose operation is unnecessary in view of overall network performance [1,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Through the shutdown of BSs, electricity consumption can be reduced significantly because more than half of total electricity consumption in MCSs is caused by BSs.…”

Energy efficiency of femtocell deployment in combined wireless/optical access networks

“…Femtocell base stations provide higher data rates with lower power signals because of reduced cell size and increased spectral efficiency. Thus, the femtocell base stations consume less energy than, e.g., macrocell or microcell ones for the same data rate [7,8,9,10]. Concurrently, the limited range means a larger number of base stations to be deployed, but also a higher flexibility.…”