The Volume Spectral and Energy Efficiency of Ultra-Dense IoT Networks with Clustered Users

The base station (BS) densification in Internet of Things (IoT) networks provides a viable pathway for enhancing network capacity to meet the ever increasing demand for data. Increasing the number of BSs also increases the energy consumption, which compromises the network energy efficiency (EE). This is important in 3 dimensional (3D) IoT deployments where volume spectral efficiency (VSE) and EE are key performance indicators (KPIs). In such networks, BS sleep modes provide an effective way to constrain both the interference and energy consumption, thereby improving the EE. In this paper, both the VSE and EE of a densified 3DIoT network are investigated when BS and UE counts follow independent 3D Homogeneous Poisson Point Process (HPPP) models and UEs are placed either uniformly or in clusters. The simulation results show that when unloaded BSs are turned off completely, including the backhaul, sufficiently densified 3DIoT networks can be made energy efficient.