Abstract
Sleep mode techniques for small cells provide an effective means to mitigate excessive energy consumption and interference associated with ultra-dense small cell deployments. Nevertheless, such techniques can impact network performance in traditional deployments. In this paper, we show that in the particular case of macro-controlled small cells, such as in the Phantom Cell Concept (PCC) architecture, effective macro-assisted energy savings schemes can be employed to reduce the network energy consumption at practically no additional cost to the network and no hit to user quality of service (QoS). We introduce a heuristic algorithm suitable for real network operation, that minimizes the energy consumption in the small cell network by selecting the small cell offering the best signal-to-interference-plus- noise ratio (SINR). We apply this heuristic to three energy savings schemes realizable in the PCC architecture. These schemes,based on the macro-assisted user equipment (UE)-small cell connection establishment paradigm, are a downlink (DL) signalling based scheme, an uplink (UL) signalling based scheme and a database-aided scheme. We derive a power consumption model for a representative PCC small cell, which allows to quantify the percentage of energy consumed by a small cell in sleep mode with respect to a fully operational small cell for the three energy savings schemes considered. Furthermore, we characterize the connection latency associated with each scheme and evaluate the impact on system performance. System-level simulations show that, even with the associated connection delays, the macro-assisted energy-saving schemes can yield energy savings of more than 45 % while at the same time introduce throughput gains of up to 25 %.
Highlights
IntroductionDeploying a large number of small cells poses several challenges such as increased network complexity and management, unplanned interference and potentially increased energy consumption (and operational costs)
Ultra-dense small cell deployments are seen as a necessary means to address the anticipated thousandfold increase in mobile network traffic by 2020 [1, 2]
8 Conclusions In this paper, we have evaluated the performance of three energy savings schemes based on the concept of macroassisted user equipment (UE) small cell connection establishment, made possible by the Phantom Cell Concept (PCC) architecture, allowing small cells to be put to a sleep state when not needed
Summary
Deploying a large number of small cells poses several challenges such as increased network complexity and management, unplanned interference and potentially increased energy consumption (and operational costs). Due to the multiple components present in a wireless network, energy savings schemes can be implemented at different levels, such as the core network (CN) or the radio access network (RAN). Approaches such as softwaredefined networking and network functions virtualization could provide some energy savings in the CN via the ability to support dynamic scale-in/scale-out of network capabilities on demand [2]. A lot of research activity has focused on techniques to reduce BS energy consumption in particular
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