On Optimal Cell Flashing for Reducing Delay and Saving Energy in Wireless Networks

초록

To save energy from cellular networks or to increase user-perceived performance, studying base station (BS) switching on-off is actively ongoing. However, many studies focus on the tradeoff between energy efficiency and user-perceived performance. In this paper, we propose a simple technique called cell flashing. Cell flashing means that base stations are turned on and off periodically and rapidly so that, when one base station is turned on, the adjacent base stations which make interferences are always off. Thus, both energy efficiency and cell edge user performances can be improved. In general, switching off base stations to save energy can lead to longer file download time (or delay) to customers. Using flow-level dynamics, we analyze average delay and energy consumption of cellular networks when cell flashing is used. We show that both of total energy consumption and average flow-level delay decrease in the case of small cells. Extensive simulations confirm that cell flashing can significantly save the energy of the base stations, e.g., by up to 25% and, at the same time, reduce the average delay by up to 75%.

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