Mechanical Relaying in Cellular Networks with Soft-QoS Guarantees

With the tremendous increase in mobile data traffic, system capacity considerations are no longer the primary and only concern to optimize for in cellular networks. The step increase in utilization of cellular networks not only has shorten the recharging cycle of mobile terminals but has further caused a considerable rise in the operators´ energy bill. It has therefore become imperative for the sustainable proliferation of such systems to reduce the energy waste and maintain low operation energy cost. As we discuss in the sequel, mechanical relaying is purposefully envisioned to achieve the required performance gains that need to be realized in order to keep up with the exponential increase in data traffic demand. Via mechanical relaying, mobile nodes are able to postpone message communication while in transit and initiate communication only when found at locations within the cell with favorable channel gains. We show that such a scheme offers the possibility to realize innovating relaying strategies that reduce many-fold the system energy consumption and increase the resource utilization efficiency. In this work, both centralized and decentralized solutions that employ mechanical relaying are considered.