Stability-Aware and Energy Efficient Cell Management in Ultra Dense Networks

The energy consumption is becoming a particular concern in Ultra Dense Networks (UDN), where thousands of small base stations (BSs) and access points are deployed in a narrow area. An applicable solution to mitigate the increased energy consumption is switching on/off the BSs in accordance with the traffic demand in the network. In the literature, it is shown that the selection of the optimal set of the BSs is an integer programming problem with considerable complexity. In this work, we propose an algorithm with reduced computational complexity while considering the stability of the network in order to avoid the frequent on/off switches of the BSs and the handovers of the users. The proposed dynamic cell management mechanism is implemented in an office/campus environment equipped with Pico BSs, and the corresponding performance evaluation is demonstrated in this paper. Results reveal substantial improvements in terms of total power consumption along with reduced numbers of handovers and on/off switches of the BSs.