Energy Efficient Deployment of Dense Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Abstract

Traffic demand is increasing exponentially and operators will need to densify their networks with small cells to meet this demand. This has created economic and ecological concerns due to the high cost of energy and the associated greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we apply tools from stochastic geometry to design a deployment strategy for multi-tier heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Using appropriate approximations, we derive simple expressions that allow insights into the energy efficiency (EE) performance of biased and unbiased HetNets. We perform a comprehensive analysis on the effect of biasing on the EE performance of HetNets. We also formulate an optimization framework that minimizes the area power consumption (APC) of the HetNet subject to appropriate performance constraints. Our results show that significant energy savings can be made by appropriately biasing the HetNet and optimizing the BS densities and their transmit powers subject to the performance constraints.