An energy-saving small-cell zooming scheme for two-tier hybrid cellular networks

The small-cell base station (SBS) has emerged as a promising technology to improve the network coverage of a macro-cell base station (MBS) for green communications. With the plug-and-play property and without the auto-configuration ability, SBSs are installed unplannedly and unequally. Under such an occasion, it is important to reduce the energy consumption in two-tier MBS-SBS networks. In addition, reducing carbon dioxide emissions is a globally common goal. In this paper, an energy-saving small-cell zooming scheme is proposed to be employed in the two-tier cellular network. The proposed scheme allows SBSs to b e smartly switched o n/off a nd z oomed i n/out, a ccording to dynamically fluctuating traffic loads, while maintaining pre-determined data-rate requirements of all users. Finally, it is observed from simulation results that the presented scheme has a much better energy-saving ability, compared with that of conventional ones.