A Distributed base station On/Off Control Mechanism for energy efficiency of small cell networks

This paper considers the power consumption problem in a macro-cell system with a number of small cells and proposes a Distributed base station On/Off Control Mechanism (D-OCM) for reducing the power consumption of the network. Using D-OCM, an inactive small base station (SBS) can be activated by either an active SBS or the macro base station (MBS), while an active SBS can be deactivated by the active SBS itself, both in a distributed manner. To support D-OCM, each base station needs to maintain three tables to store relevant network status information on its neighbor base stations. Both the MBS and an SBS build the tables using the network status information collected from the users within their coverage. Each base station, either the MBS or an SBS, makes a decision to activate an SBS in a sleep state or to deactivate an SBS in a working state based on the traffic load within its coverage. Simulation shows that the proposed D-OCM mechanism can significantly reduce the power consumption of the network as compared a traditional control mechanism.