A Sleeping Mechanism for Cache-Enabled Small Cell Networks With Energy Harvesting Function

Abstract

In the 5G small cell networks, the network edge has been largely enhanced by the rich network functions, which makes small cell base stations (SBSs) the major energy consumption components. To overcome this challenge, the energy harvesting technology has been attracting researchers’ attention. However, how to exploit the density characteristic of the small cell networks and match the dynamics of the arrival energy to the user requirements are still remained to be investigated. In our work, we propose a sleeping mechanism in the 5G small cell networks with energy harvesting function. In addition, the cooperative caching is jointly considered. Firstly, we formulate the energy consumption minimization problem considering both the energy cost by the SBSs and backhaul. And secondly, to solve the formulated problem, we decompose the original problem into two subproblems, which are the SBS status decision and the cooperative content caching, respectively. Thirdly, the solution which is composed of the binary particle swarm optimization (BPSO) and the linear programming tool, is proposed. Finally, simulation results show that our proposed algorithm has the advantage of reducing the energy consumption compared with other algorithms.