Energy-efficient time-power domain resources allocation for macro-pico heterogeneous networks

Recently green communications in Heterogeneous Networks has attracted extensive attention. To improve Energy Efficiency (EE) in the premise of maintaining the throughput, we propose an energy-efficient time-power domain resources allocation algorithm. From the aspect of time domain, we propose an adaptive Almost Blank Subframe (ABS) configuration scheme to provide each sector a proper ABS ratio. From the aspect of power domain, we propose a utility function to improve network EE and maintain the throughput of macrocell edge User Equipments (UEs) as well. The existence of the optimal solution to the utility function is proved, and Differential Evolution (DE) is applied to find the optimal solution. System level simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly improve the network EE, and a recommended value of Cell Range Expansion (CRE) bias is given under the consideration of both EE and fairness.