Optimal Base Station Deployment for Small Cell Networks with Energy-Efficient Power Control

TL;DR

This paper investigates the optimal deployment of base stations in small cell networks with energy-efficient power control, demonstrating that on-off power control significantly improves energy efficiency at the optimal density.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical framework for determining the optimal base station density that maximizes energy efficiency with on-off power control in small cell networks.

Findings

Optimal base station density exists and can be numerically determined.

On-off power control outperforms all-on control in energy efficiency.

Analytical and simulation results confirm the benefits of optimal density deployment.

Abstract

In this paper, how to optimally deploy base station density in a small cell network with energy-efficient power control was investigated. Base stations (BSs) and users form two independent Poisson point processes (PPPs) in the network. Since user-centric cell association may lead to void cells that do not have any users, the power of each BS is controlled in either all-on or on-off mode depending on whether its cell is void or not. The average cell rates for each power control mode are first found and their corresponding energy efficiency is also characterized. The optimal BS density that maximizes the energy efficiency under a given user density is theoretically proved to exist and its value can be found numerically. Both analytical and simulated results indicate that on-off power control is significantly superior to all-on power control in terms of energy efficiency if BSs are deployed based on their optimal energy-efficient density.