Optimal energy minimization in load-coupled wireless networks: Computation and properties

We consider the problem of sum transmission energy minimization in a cellular network where base stations interfere with one another. Each base station has to serve a target amount of data to its set of users, by varying its power and load, where the latter refers to the average level of channel resource usage in the cell. We employ the signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio (SINR) load-coupled model that takes into account the load of each cell. We show analytically that operating at full load is optimal to minimize sum energy. Moreover, we provide an iterative power adjustment algorithm for all base stations to achieve full load. Numerical results are obtained that corroborate the analysis and illustrate the advantage of our solution compared to the conventional solution where uniform power is used for all base stations.