Traffic-aware user association technique for dynamic on/off switching of small cells

Introducing low-power Small Cells (SCs) in Heterogeneous Networks (HetNets) deployment can help in satisfying the increasing demands of mobile data rates. On/Off switching of SCs is one of the techniques introduced in LTE-Advanced to improve user throughput in HetNets via reducing interference. In this paper, we propose a novel traffic-aware user association technique which increases the throughput achieved by dynamic SC on/off switching by (12.7% to 24.7%) and reduces the energy consumed per bit by (41.1% to 60.7%) at different traffic loads. The proposed algorithm takes into consideration multiple factors including traffic load and dynamic on/off switching delays of SCs. The new technique also outperforms existing static on/off techniques at most traffic loads.