Energy Efficiency Performance of LTE Dynamic Base Station Downlink DTX Operation

Dynamic base station downlink discontinuous transmission (DTX) operations have been proposed and under discussion in the standardization body as a candidate to reduce interference in the LTE network to support rapidly increasing demand for mobile broadband services and traffic volumes [1]. In this paper, we analyze the energy efficiency improvement of the dynamic base station DTX operations from three perspectives. First, we discuss the complementary operation aspect of the dynamic base station DTX and existing LTE dormant mode. Secondly, we provide an analysis showing substantial energy efficiency benefits at all loads of dynamic base station DTX operation with near- future base station hardware components. Thirdly, we provide an analytical framework to assess the energy saving potential of the dynamic base station DTX concept for all possible future hardware improvement possibilities.