Exploiting user context information for energy management in enterprise femtocell networks

Enterprise femtocell networks provide connectivity for indoor users supporting enhanced capacity given traffic and Quality-of-Service (QoS) provision requirements. Their deployment is usually dense with the objective to serve peak hour demands. However, users do not enter or leave an indoor environment at the same time or use extensively the network resources on a constant basis. During times where the network is underutilized, energy is wasted depending on the degree of mismatch between the offered capacity and user demand. This paper aims to resolve this problem by introducing autonomous power-aware femtocell operation based on the user context information. A set of energy management strategies and algorithms are introduced based on the user location, femtocell coverage, per user resource demand and other context information associated with users entering/leaving times and electronic calendar entries. Our results demonstrate that adopting user context information can improve significantly the energy expenditure of enterprise femtocell networks.