Green Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Chapter 7Dynamic Planning in Green Networks

This chapter investigates operation of green wireless networks by using a dynamic planning approach. At a low-call traffic load, network operators are expected to save energy by switching off some of their BSs, and letting mobile users to be served by the remaining active BSs. In this context, three research directions are discussed. The first direction examines dynamic cell zooming and BS sleep scheduling for dense heterogeneous networks with macro and pico BSs. The second direction studies cooperation of network operators as a means of energy saving, where networks with overlapped coverage cooperate to reduce their energy consumption by alternately switching on and off their resources according to the traffic load conditions. Finally, the third direction presents a dynamic planning framework with balanced energy efficiency that accounts for the energy consumption of the mobile users in the uplink in addition to that of the network operators in the downlink.

7.1 Introduction

Great advancements in wireless communications services have resulted in high energy consumption by network operators and mobile users. In the literature, there have been several proposals for designing an energy aware infrastructure in wireless communications networks. Energy awareness in wireless communications networks has been studied for a long time in mobile devices and wireless sensors, due to their limited power capabilities. Recently, such awareness has ...