Cell throughput based sleep control scheme for heterogeneous cellular networks

Recently, the concept of heterogeneous networks (HetNets) has been proposed as an alternative solution to provide higher coverage and capacity for cellular networks. In HetNets concept, many of small base stations (SBSs) are employed in the existing cell of macro base stations (MBSs) to increase the coverage and system capacity. However, the employment of many SBSs in the existing macro cells would causes the increase in power consumption with decreasing the energy efficiency in downlink cellular networks. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a cell throughput based sleep control scheme for the SBSs in HetNets. In the proposed scheme, the cell capacity ratio for the SBSs is employed as decision criteria to put the SBSs into sleep state. From various simulation results, the proposed scheme can achieve better energy efficiency and better system throughput than the conventional schemes.