ICE: Intelligent Cell BrEathing to Optimize the Utilization of Green Energy

This letter proposes Intelligent Cell brEathing (ICE) to optimize the utilization of green energy in cellular networks by minimizing the maximal energy depleting rate of the low-power base stations powered by green energy. Minimizing the maximal depleting rate is an NP-hard problem. ICE is thus proposed to achieve low computational complexity. ICE, in each iteration, finds the energy dependent set and the vector of beacon power level decrements for low-power base stations in the set, and then shrinks the coverage area of these base stations by reducing their beacon power levels. The algorithm iterates until the optimal solution is found. ICE balances the energy consumptions among LBSs, enables more users to be served with green energy, and therefore reduces the on-grid energy consumption.