A green small cells deployment in 5G — Switch ON/OFF via IoT networks & energy efficient mesh backhauling

Abstract

The densification of the network based on a large scale deployment of small cells represents a promising solution that meets the requirements of the 5th generation wireless systems (5G) in terms of network capacity and throughput. This densification via small cells with different sizes in addition to macro base stations constitute an heterogeneous network (HetNet) with a high level of performance and service quality. However, it introduces several important technical challenges. On one hand, even if the small cells are low power consumption base stations, a large scale deployment of them increases the energy consumption of the radio access network. On the other hand, this large deployment creates new challenges related to the insuring of a reliable and flexible backhaul links for all the small cell base stations. In this paper, we address the topic of the deployment of small cells in the future radio access network 5G. We propose our new and original switch ON/OFF mechanism for small cells base stations based on Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN). Our proposal aims to completely shutdown the small cells in heterogeneous networks during low traffic periods. We carry out the wake-up process using a connected Internet of Things (IoT) object based on a Long Range (LoRa) system dedicated for Internet of Things applications. Furthermore, we present our proposal of providing an energy efficient backhaul for the small cell based on the deployment of Mesh routers. These routers are based on our original mechanism that we called start and stop which also allows a reducing of the energy consumed requested to insure the backhauling.