Energy scope of handoff strategies in macro-femtocell environments

Energy consumption in downlink mode is becoming an important topic as cellular communications grow into a large scale enterprise. The search for high rates keeping energy constraints low has put forward the idea that cells with smaller size may improve not only the capacity of the network, but also reduce the amount of energy that is needed to achieve such capacities. When using heterogeneous networks, users can be encouraged to handoff to a femtocell, that offers better capacity per unit energy spent, by means of different handoff strategies. These strategies may also improve the energy use of the network if the handoff priority is given to both, capacity, and energy use.