P.Gonzalez-Brevis, J. Gondzio, Y. Fan, V. Poor, J. Thompson, I. Krikidis and P.-J. Chung
Abstract
This paper studies the combined problem of base station location and optimal
power allocation, in order to optimize the energy efficiency of a cellular
wireless network. Recent work has suggested that moving from a network of a
small number of high power macrocells to a larger number of smaller
microcells may improve the energy efficiency of the network. This paper
investigates techniques to optimize the number of base stations and their
locations, in order to minimize energy consumption. An important
contribution of the paper is that it takes into account non-uniform user
distributions across the coverage area, which is likely to be encountered in
practice. The problem is solved using approaches from optimization theory
that deal with the facility location problem. Stochastic programming
techniques are used to deal with the expected user distributions. An example
scenario is presented to illustrate how the technique works and the
potential performance gains that can be achieved.
Key words: base station location, energy efficiency, cellular wireless network