Interference minimization through sleep mode based resource allocation for future femtocell networks

This paper proposes a solution for interference management in femtocell networks. We focus on studying the capacity and energy consumption behavior of femtocell deployment by utilizing a sleep mode strategy. A novel method is proposed to provide a systematic way to accurately select the candidate femtocells that yield a substantial impact in terms of resource utilization when deactivated. Those femtocells are selected by running customized tests that do not require an exhaustive search. For validation purposes, the performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated and compared with the approach without sleep mode activation. Additionally, a maximum likelihood benchmark is also provided for comparison. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme can provide an excellent overall performance and outperforms the always-on system, while approaching the performance of the optimal benchmark scheme with significantly less computational complexity.