Energy saving analysis and evaluation in the enhanced Local Area architecture

In this paper, we investigate the energy savings in small-cell networks in the enhanced Local Area architecture at two stages. At the cell planning stage, we derive the optimal base station (BS) density in terms of the minimum total BS power consumption under certain coverage requirement. Results show that the optimal BS density depends on both the coverage requirement and the BS power consumption model. At the dynamic cell operation stage, we evaluate the feasibility of dynamic BS switching off scheme quantitatively by system level simulations following assumptions and models in 3GPP. Results show that the energy savings are achieved at the cost of data rate loss, and the overall energy efficiency improvement is marginal.