Energy saving in OFDMA cellular systems using base-station sleep mode: 3GPP-LTE a case study

Green Radio has emerged as one of the most important considerations in the present scenario of global warming. It is known that the power consumption of a Base Station is not only due to the radio power transmitted and the power consumed by the digital signal processing transceiver units but also due to the huge amount of power consumed by the cooling system and power backup units. It has been seen that although traffic load varies over a large range during a 24 hour cycle the power consumption does not vary proportionally. Traffic load dependent power saving is one of the foci of this work. An important aspect included in this work is the huge penetration loss that is added to the system Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) during night time when most of the users are considered to be indoor. This work focuses on the performance evaluation cell sleep mode to save power (reduce carbon foot print). Results relating to three sector urban micro-cell scenario as per International Telecommunication Union (ITU) specification are presented. Traffic load threshold for activating the sleep mode is also identified.