An energy-efficient cell planning strategy for heterogeneous network based on realistic traffic data

With the exponential growth of wireless network data traffic and mobile users, traditional single layer homogeneous network cannot meet the increasing high-speed traffic demand. As a solution, heterogeneous networks (HetNet) are considered as a promising architecture to fulfill the challenge. At the same time, energy consumption problem has become one of the most challenging problems due to the fast expansion of wireless network scale. Traditionally, network operators are more concerned about the coverage and capacity problem when planning cellular networks, rather than the energy efficiency of the network. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient micro base station (BS) planning strategy based on realistic traffic data in HetNet architecture. A genetic algorithm (GA) is introduced to solve the optimization problem. By carefully selecting algorithm parameters, the algorithm can produce a set of near optimum solutions. The simulation results show that the energy efficiency and traffic coverage ratio are both improved by the deployment of micro BSs.