Designing wireless broadband access for energy efficiency: Are small cells the only answer?

Emil Björnson (1) , Luca Sanguinetti (2, 3) , Marios Kountouris (2, 4)

1 LIU - Linköping University
2 LANEAS - Large Networks and Systems Group
3 University of Pisa - Università di Pisa
4 Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab [Paris]

The main usage of cellular networks has changed from voice to data traffic, mostly requested by static users. In this paper, we analyze how a cellular network should be designed to provide such wireless broadband access with maximal energy efficiency (EE). Using stochastic geometry and a detailed power consumption model, we optimize the density of access points (APs), number of antennas and users per AP, and transmission power for maximal EE. Small cells are of course a key technology in this direction, but the analysis shows that the EE improvement of a small-cell network saturates quickly with the AP density and then " massive MIMO " techniques can further improve the EE.

Domaines: Mathématiques [math]; Sciences de l'ingénieur [physics]; Statistiques [stat]

Emil Björnson, Luca Sanguinetti, Marios Kountouris. Designing wireless broadband access for energy efficiency: Are small cells the only answer?. IEEE International Conference on Communication Workshop (ICCW), Jun 2015, London, United Kingdom. pp.136-141, ⟨10.1109/ICCW.2015.7247168⟩. ⟨hal-01237231⟩