Area Spectral and Energy Efficiency Analysis of Cellular Networks with Cell DTX

Cell discontinuous transmission (DTX) has been proposed as an effective solution to reduce energy consumption of cellular networks. In this paper, we investigate the impact of network traffic load on area spectral efficiency (ASE) and energy efficiency (EE) of cellular networks with cell DTX. Closed-form expressions of ASE and EE as functions of traffic load for cellular networks with cell DTX are derived. It is shown that ASE increases monotonically in traffic load, while EE depends on the power consumption of base stations in sleep mode. If this power consumption is larger than a percentage of the active-mode power consumption, EE increases monotonically with traffic load and is maximized when the network is fully loaded. Otherwise, EE first increases and then decreases in traffic load. In this case, ASE and EE are maximized with different loads. The percentage threshold only depends on the path loss exponent of radio propagation environment and is calculated to be 56.2% when the path loss exponent is 4.