Switch-DFT: Adaptive Waveform and MIMO Switching for Energy-Efficient Base Stations

TL;DR

Switch-DFT is an adaptive framework that dynamically switches waveforms and MIMO modes to optimize energy efficiency in base stations, reducing power consumption while maintaining target data rates.

Contribution

It introduces a novel adaptive switching scheme between CP-OFDM and DFT-s-OFDM, and between SIMO and MIMO modes, to improve base station energy efficiency.

Findings

Switch-DFT reduces power amplifier backoff by using DFT-s-OFDM.

It achieves target data rates at lower power levels.

It outperforms static configurations across various spectral efficiencies.

Abstract

Energy efficiency has emerged as a critical challenge in modern base stations (BSs), as the power amplifier (PA) consumes a substantial portion of the total power due to its limited efficiency. We investigate waveform and mode adaptation to enhance the energy efficiency of BSs. We propose Switch-DFT, an adaptive switching framework that selects between cyclic prefix orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CP-OFDM) and discrete Fourier transform-spread-OFDM (DFT-s-OFDM) waveforms, as well as between single-input multiple-output (SIMO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) modes. Switch-DFT improves efficiency by reducing PA backoff with DFT-s-OFDM and achieves the target rate at lower power by leveraging higher MIMO throughput. This results in superior energy efficiency over a wide range of the spectral efficiencies compared with static configurations.