Impact of femtocells to the WCDMA network energy efficiency

Energy consumption of mobile access networks has recently received increased attention. The cellular networks do not have considerable share in the overall energy consumption of the ICT (Information and Communication Technology) sector. However, reduction in energy consumption of cellular networks has great importance from economical and environmental perspective. In this paper we focus on the WCDMA energy saving through femtocell deployment. A simple model for the energy consumption per unit area has been derived based on WCDMA downlink load equations. The model is used to investigate the impact of load sharing between femtocells and macrocells on the overall energy consumption of the network. Based on the model we present two examples where two different deployment scenarios have been compared.