Performance evaluation of an energy efficient RRM strategy in heterogeneous cellular networks

Abstract

The objective of increasing the Energy Efficiency of communication systems must cope with a sustained growth of the market, a greater penetration of broadband services in everyday life, higher data rate services and a large increase of the number of mobile subscriptions. In this scenario, a particular attention has to be devoted to energy saving strategies that may also contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of an effective energy saving strategy is to reduce the power consumption without introducing any significant decrease in the network and system performance. In this paper we present the complete performance evaluation of a previously proposed strategy: particularly, the considered joint Radio Resource Management (RRM) strategy is based on the use of the cell sleep mode and the reduction of the maximum transmission power at the base station; the exponential smoothing technique is applied to forecast traffic in a given area considering daily and weekly variations. A detailed evaluation of system performance is done with reference to the no energy saving case. Results show the effectiveness of the propose strategy in heterogeneous networks (Het-Nets) where cells of different sizes effectively coexist.