Designing Wireless Broadband Access for Energy Efficiency: Are Small Cells the Only Answer?

TL;DR

This paper investigates how to optimize cellular network design for maximum energy efficiency, highlighting that while small cells are important, massive MIMO techniques can further enhance energy efficiency beyond small-cell deployment.

Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive analysis combining stochastic geometry and power models to optimize AP density, antennas, users, and power for energy efficiency, showing the complementary roles of small cells and massive MIMO.

Findings

Small cells improve energy efficiency but saturate quickly with density.

Massive MIMO can significantly further improve energy efficiency.

Optimal network design involves balancing small cell deployment and massive MIMO use.

Abstract

The main usage of cellular networks has changed from voice to data traffic, mostly requested by static users. In this paper, we analyze how a cellular network should be designed to provide such wireless broadband access with maximal energy efficiency (EE). Using stochastic geometry and a detailed power consumption model, we optimize the density of access points (APs), number of antennas and users per AP, and transmission power for maximal EE. Small cells are of course a key technology in this direction, but the analysis shows that the EE improvement of a small-cell network saturates quickly with the AP density and then "massive MIMO" techniques can further improve the EE.