On autonomous energy-saving mechanism for self-organizing LTE networks

Abstract

The trend of cellular communication is not only to improve the network throughput, but user satisfaction. In particular, the cell edge performance is an important issue. A lot of studies have been done in the area of Inter-Cell Interference Coordination (ICIC), especially in the cell-edge performance. On the other hand, the issue of energy efficiency for wireless networks has recently gained a lot attention. In this paper, an energy saving mechanism is proposed which operates in conjunction with an autonomous ICIC algorithm for LTE. This allows enhanced NodeBs (eNBs) to cooperate autonomously in the absence of a standardized interface. Simulation results show that cell-edge performance has been significantly improved while using a small fraction of the transmit power compared to the baseline.