Energy efficiency analysis of downlink CoMP in heterogeneous network considering fronthaul power consumption

Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) in heterogeneous network (HetNet) has been a promising solution to meet the unprecedented growth of data traffic. In this paper, we revisit the conventional energy efficiency (EE) for the downlink of HetNet CoMP by considering the fronthaul power consumption. To this end, we propose a new power consumption model for the practical use, in which two methods of fronthaul transmission are investigated, namely “After-precoding (AP)” and “Before-precoding (BP)”. In order to further improve the EE, the sleep mode of small cells is applied. Based on the EE formulation via the proposed power consumption model, we verify the EE performances of CoMP and Non-CoMP, and present the impact of the fronthaul power on the EE in HetNet CoMP system through numerical results.