Joint Base Station Activation and Downlink Beamforming Design for Heterogeneous Networks

In this paper, we investigate joint base station (BS) activation and beamforming design for coordinated downlink transmissions in a cellular heterogeneous network (HetNet). We formulate the total power minimization problem as a mixed integer program. Using the Benders´ partitioning method and the convex duality theory, we show that the global optimal solution can then be computed by solving a sequence of relaxed master programs and the associated subproblems with affordable complexity.