Energy-Efficient Future Wireless Networks: A Marriage between Massive MIMO and Small Cells

TL;DR

This paper models cellular networks with stochastic geometry to optimize energy efficiency by combining massive MIMO and small cells, revealing that their integration outperforms pure approaches.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model optimizing energy efficiency through joint deployment of massive MIMO and small cells, highlighting their complementary benefits.

Findings

Optimal energy efficiency achieved by combining small cells and massive MIMO

Pure small-cell or massive MIMO approaches are less efficient

Joint approach balances propagation loss reduction and user multiplexing

Abstract

How would a cellular network designed for high energy efficiency look like? To answer this fundamental question, we model cellular networks using stochastic geometry and optimize the energy efficiency with respect to the density of base stations, the number of antennas and users per cell, the transmit power levels, and the pilot reuse. The highest efficiency is neither achieved by a pure small-cell approach, nor by a pure massive MIMO solution. Interestingly, it is the combination of these approaches that provides the highest energy efficiency; small cells contributes by reducing the propagation losses while massive MIMO enables multiplexing of users with controlled interference.