TRANSACTIONS ON EMERGING TELECOMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/ett.2835

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Energy-aware load adaptive framework for LTE

heterogeneous network
Ayad Atiyah Abdulkafi1,2,3*, David Chieng2 , Tiong Sieh Kiong1 , Alvin Ting2 , Johnny Koh1
and Abdulaziz M. Ghaleb4
1 Power Engineering Center, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Selangor, Malaysia
2 Wireless Communication Cluster, MIMOS Berhad, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
3 College of Engineering, Tikrit University, Salahaldin, Iraq
4 Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC), Doha, Qatar

ABSTRACT
One of the main approaches for improving the network energy efficiency (EE) is through the introduction of load adaptive
techniques, where the network’s components/subsystems are switched off when the network is lightly loaded. Optimising
such a dynamic operation in a heterogeneous network (HetNet) remains an active topic of research. In this paper, a traffic
load-adaptive model that aims to evaluate the EE of base stations in Long Term Evolution (LTE) HetNet is presented.First,
a model that simulates the load-adaptive power consumption behaviour of LTE HetNet is developed. In this regard, a load
adaptation factor is introduced to assess the network’s EE performance. The model also adapts and predicts the achievable
data rate of each base station with respect to the traffic load. Our study shows that the fully load-adaptive LTE HetNet can
significantly improve network’s EE up to 10%, 40%, and 80% for high, medium, and low loads, respectively, as compared
to the conventional non load-adaptive HetNet. In addition, we show that the full adaptive network operation can achieve
significant EE gains under a realistic daily traffic profile up to 86%. The proposed evaluation model is essential to assess
the network EE and can be used in future studies that focus on improving the adaptation level of the already installed
network equipments. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

*Correspondence
Ayad Atiyah Abdulkafi, Power Engineering Center, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Selangor, Malaysia.
E-mail: al.ayad@yahoo.com

Received 27 January 2014; Revised 20 March 2014; Accepted 27 March 2014

1. INTRODUCTION usage of cell zooming. The proposed scheme maintains

In current wireless networks, although the traffic loads
fluctuate significantly over time, the power consumed is
found to be nearly constant. In other words, the power con-
sumption of these networks is generally independent of
the traffic load because they are often dimensioned accord-
ing to peak traffic load plus a reserve [1, 2]. In order to
improve the energy efficiency (EE), the consumed power
in the base station (BS) should scale as close as possible to
the amount of traffic load served, which can in principle be
accomplished by using more efficient and traffic load adap-
tive hardware equipments and software modules [3, 4].
Taking advantage of cooperative communication [5], the
EE of cellular networks can be improved by reducing the
number of active BSs required in an area by adapting the
network layout according to mobile users’ traffic demands
[6–8]. The work in [8] offers one of the earliest insights
on load-adaptive operation where the authors propose the
the coverage and reduces the number of active cells by
changing the coverage pattern of cells based on traffic load
and hence offering potential power consumption reduction.
In [7], the overall power consumption of a telecommuni-
cation network is estimated through analysing the power
requirements of network equipment and the amount of traf-
fic received from the users. The authors claim that future
networks with sleep mode and load adaptation enabled will
save a consistent amount of energy.
Based on user context and network service, the work in
[9] applies energy efficient decision algorithms on multi-
radio access technology networks in order to dynamically
adapt network capacity to the actual traffic load demands
by reconfiguring the network elements. Bandwidth (BW)
adaptation, capacity adaptation (CAP), and micro discon-
tinuous transmission (micro DTX) techniques have been
proposed by [10] to save energy in Long Term Evolution
(LTE) networks. With the BW adaptation technique, during

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

 A. A. Abdulkafi et al.
medium or low traffic load, the BW is stepwise down-
scaled so that a lower number of resource blocks (RBs)
are allocated. CAP is accomplished by limiting the num-
ber of scheduled LTE RBs. When resource utilisation is
relatively high, the micro DTX technique allows the unoc-
cupied resources to be more flexibly utilised where the
fixed steps of BW and CAP adaptation limit the energy
saving potential [10]. The work in [11, 12] shows that the
upper bound of EE can be achieved by adapting both trans-
mit power and its allocation according to the channel states
and the circuit power consumption.
The emerging LTE heterogeneous network (HetNet)
architecture offers a vast potential for conserving power
using load-adaptive techniques. In this type of cellular
network, Macro evolved Node-BSs (MeNBs) are comple-
mented with lower transmit power cells such as Micro
evolved Node-BS (MieNBs) and Pico evolved Node-BS
(PeNBs) [6, 13]. While MeNBs ensure permanent cover-
age, smaller cells can be turned on and off according to the
traffic load.
In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive model
for evaluating load-adaptive network operation in LTE-
HetNet. In the model, the consumed power and the achiev-
able data rates are adapted to match the varying traffic
loads. Within this work, a new load adaptive factor that
represents the load-adaptive power consumption behaviour
of each BS is introduced. On top of insights gained by
deriving the relationships between BS traffic load, data rate
and power consumption, an evaluation methodology for
network operator to assess the EE of their HetNets is devel-
oped. The remainder of this paper is organised as follows.
In Section 2, the coverage, traffic load, power and data
rate models are discussed. Section 3 presents the numer-
ical results and discussions while the concluding remarks
are presented in Section 4.
2. NETWORK MODELS
We consider a HetNet model which consists of a mixture
of MeNBs, MieNBs, and PeNBs as shown in Figure 1. In
the following subsections, we define the cell coverage area,
traffic load, power and EE models.
Figure 1. HetNet model.
2.1. Coverage model
The required degree of coverage provided by a site depends
on the received power at the user equipment (UE) and its
sensitivity [14]. The received power Prx (in dBm) from a
BS at a distance of r and angle  from the main lobe of the
antenna is given by [15]
Prx . , r/ D Ptx  Ploss . , r/ (1)
where Ptx is the transmitted power and Ploss is the aggre-
gated signal losses due to path loss (PL), outdoor–indoor
penetration loss (Pe / and radiation pattern (Ah). Ploss (in
dB) can be expressed as
Ploss . , r/ D PL.r/ C Pe C Ah. / (2)
Base stations are classified as MeNBs, MieNBs and
PeNBs based on their transmitted power and on their
antenna heights.
The reference sensitivity level is the minimum power
received at which a throughput requirement is fulfilled. It is
measured with the transmitter operating at full power. The
reference sensitivity level, Pmin , according to [16, 17] is
Pmin .dBm/ D Np C NF C SINRreq C IL  Gd (3)
where Np is the thermal noise level in the specified BW
defined as
Np D kT C 10 log10 .NRB . 180 kHz/ (4)
According to LTE specifications [17], the thermal noise
density, kT, D 174 dBm/Hz where Boltzmann’s constant
k D 1.380662  1023 and receiver temperature, T is
15 ı C. NF is the prescribed maximum noise figure for
the UE, which is a measure of the signal-to-interference-
plus-noise ratio (SINR) degradation caused by elements in
the RF signal chain. LTE defines an NF requirement of
9 dB for the UE. SINRreq is the SINR requirement for the
chosen modulation and coding scheme, IL is the imple-
mentation margin and Gd represents the diversity gain. It is
worth mentioning that Gd is assumed 3 dB for MeNB and
zero for small cells. In LTE, the BW can be expressed as
BW D NRB  180 kHz, where NRB is the number of RBs
and 180 kHz is the BW of one RB. After Pmin is calculated,
the PL in formula (2) can be figured out. With this PL and
a particular propagation model, the cell radius can be cal-
culated. The propagation models defined by 3GPP [18] for
urban area are used in our simulation.
The cell coverage area C, which is the fraction of cell
area where the received power of user terminal is above
Pmin , can be written as [14]
   
2  2ab 2  ab
C D Q.a/ C exp Q (5)
b2 b
where the Q-function is defined as the probability that a
Gaussian random variable X with mean 0 and variance 1 is
greater than z
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

Z1 ! a behaviour. The load factor of a BS can be defined as the

1 x2
Q.z/ D prob.X > z/ D p exp  dx (6) ratio of the RBs utilised by the BS’s users to the total RBs
2 2 available to this BS. It describes the portion of RBs which
z
are allocated for users, where zero and full load correspond
and to no active user in the cell and providing one or more users
with all resources available, respectively. The traffic load,
Pmin  Prx .Rg / 10 ˛ log10 .e/ L, of a BS has been defined as [22]
aD , bD (7)
‰dB ‰dB
Nu
where ˛ is the PL exponent and  dB is the standard LD (9)
NT
deviation of shadow fading, whereas Prx .Rg / represents
the received power at cell edge .Rg /. Hence, the cover-
where Nu is the number of the utilised RBs by BS’s users,
age area of a cell is a function of receiver sensitivity Pmin ,
whereas NT represents the total number of RBs available to
carrier frequency f , transmitted power Ptx , PL exponent
that BS. In this paper, an appropriate evaluation framework
˛ and shadowing standard deviation  dB [19, 20]. By
for load adaptive network operation is proposed, wherein
limiting the coverage area to a certain size, the network
the actual traffic load determines the network’s power
performance in terms of achievable data rates and efficien-
consumption and its achievable data rate as well as the
cies within each BS can be estimated. Therefore, based
network EE.
on Equation (5), the lower and upper bounds for cell cov-
erage area can be written as (see Appendix A for detail
derivation) 2.3. Power models
 2
2 exp a2
In the following section, the power consumption of BS is
p <C expressed as a function of the traffic load. The following
.1 C a2 / Œb2 C .2  ab/2  2 theoretical models are employed to describe in a simple yet
 2 (8)
effective manner the relation between the consumed power
2 exp a 2 2 and the actual traffic load. The linear relationship between
< p , >a>0
a.2  ab/ 2 b the transmission and operational power consumptions of a
BS i can be represented by [3, 23, 24]
The specific procedure to find the coverage area for each
type of BS in HetNet is summarised in Table I. Poi D Nsec . Nant . .Ai . Ptx C Bi / (10)

2.2. Traffic load model where Nsec and Nant denote the BS’s number of sectors and
the number of antennas per sector, respectively. Po and Ptx
According to [21], the distribution of traffic load is typ- denote the operational power consumption and transmit-
ically non-uniform across the cells and the traffic load ted power, respectively. The coefficient Ai accounts for the
volume is observed to fluctuate significantly over time. power consumption that scales with the transmitted power,
Because of that, it is important to look into methods that whereas Bi is the power offsets consumed independently of
evaluate the EE of wireless network, which exhibits such the transmitted power.
However, the idea of load adaptive network power is to
enable the network power consumption to scale with load
Table I. Algorithm for estimating the BS cell size. rather than being static. Therefore, in this study, the BS
power consumption has been modelled using two types of
Input: Ptx SINR req , BW for each BS power consumptions, namely, the static power consump-
Output: Maximum cell radius for different BSs
tion and the dynamic power consumption. When turned
1. Set the environment scenario and BS type
on, each BS consumes a constant amount of power (fixed
2. Find Pmin based on MCS, BW and NF.
power) depending on the BS’s type regardless of the traffic
3. Initialize cell radius r D 0 for the entire BS.
load. This amount of power is always required just for the
4. Find Prx at distance r based on link budget
calculations.
equipments to be powered on. The second part is the adap-
5. While Prx > Pmin tive power consumption, which consists of an amount of
6. Calculate the coverage degree C . power proportional to the traffic load. The adaptation level
7. while C > 95 between the traffic load and the power consumption has
8. r D r C r been modelled in term of load adaptive factor ./. Thus,
9. if C <D 95 the total power consumed by BS i is the sum of the static
10. Maximum cell radius D r  r and adaptive power consumptions.
11. end
12. end Pci D i . Li . Poi C .1  i / Poi (11)

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 A. A. Abdulkafi et al.
where Pc is the overall consumed power of BS i and Po
is its maximum operational power when it is fully utilised,
that is, L D 1. When  D 0, the BS would consume
a fixed amount of power regardless of the traffic load. In
order to achieve a traffic load-adaptive operation, a direct
proportionality between the consumed power and traffic
load is required. The full adaptive operation (i.e., ideal
case  D 1) is far from being true in existing networks
and network components [1], in which a BS is assumed
to be fully adaptive and would ideally consume no power
when it is inactive and consume more power as the traffic
load increases. These types of BSs are still far from real-
ity because several equipments in the BSs still consume
power while idle. However, there is a considerable impact
of traffic load variations on the BS power consumption
[25]. Therefore, this power adaptation model improves the
network EE by adapting the BSs’ power consumption cor-
responding to the traffic load in the network, that is, based
on the traffic load demand, parts of the BS such as car-
riers or sectors or even the BS itself are switched on/off.
It is worth mentioning that switching off the BS or parts
of it could have an impact on the UE performance as the
UE has to connect to another BS that is further away with
a potential increase of the UE power consumption [26].
However, this paper only focuses on the network’s side
EE and does not consider the power consumption of UE.
Besides, the small BSs such as MieNBs and PeNBs may
have larger values of  than that of MeNBs as they do not
usually have large power amplifiers or cooling equipments
[3]. Hence, the overall power PHet drained by HetNet can
be represented by the sum of powers consumed of all
its BSs
NBS
X
PHet D Pci C Pbh (12)
iD1
where NBS is the total sum of BSs in HetNet and Pbh is the
backhaul power consumption which can be added to the
overall network power consumption [27].
2.4. Energy efficiency models
First, a constant interference level all over the cell has
been assumed in which the interference value has to be
computed with respect to the actual traffic load. The inter-
ference analysis is carried out as part of the proposed
model to determine the interference margin (IM) and to
derive the SINR in the cell. The IM can be defined
as a relation between signals received with and without
interference as
Prx =Np
SNR
IM D D (13)
Prx =.Iown C Iother C Np / SINR
where Iown is the own cell interference which is close to
zero due to the orthogonal subcarriers in LTE and Iother is
the other cell interference.
As a rule, the higher the traffic load in the neighbour cell,
the more RBs are used there and consequently, the stronger
are the interfering signals, especially when frequency reuse
1 is applied [28]. Therefore, the downlink IM depends on
the aggregated load factor of neighbouring cells, Lother ;
when one increases, the other also increases [29, 30]
1
IM D (14)
1  Lother
For each point of the cell, the SINR received from the
MeNB and the closest small cells is estimated. The aim
is to calculate the achievable data rate of the UE located
at this point. Throughout these calculations, the inter-
ferences generated from surrounding BSs are taken into
account. After rearranging and substituting (14) into (13),
the received SINR can be written as follows
Prx
SINR D SNR .1  Lother / D .1  Lother / (15)
Np
As the traffic load of neighbouring cells increases, a higher
degree of interference is experienced, and subsequently,
the average SINR in the cell is reduced. Similarly, the
increase in interference from neighbouring cells will also
degrade the data rate of the cell. The actual (achievable)
data rate within each BS is calculated according to the
SINR and the utilised BW. As previously mentioned, the
BW in LTE can be expressed in terms of the number of
RBs multiplied by their BW which is 180 kHz for one
RB (i.e. BWD NRB  BWRB /. Consequently, the total
BW available to the BS can be expressed in terms of the
total number of RBs available to that BS multiplied by
their BW (i.e. BWTotal D NT . BWRB /, whereas the utilised
BW, BWutilised , which determines the achievable (actual)
data rate, is a function of the number of the utilised RBs
multiplied by their BW, such that
BWutilised D Nu . 180 kHz
D L . BWTotal (16)
D L . NT . 180 kHz
Assume an LTE network where each user is assigned one
or more RBs for data reception or transmission. The peak
data rates are available only in extremely good channel
conditions. The practical data rate is limited by the amount
of interference and noise in the network. Therefore, we
define the achievable data rate to be the modified Shannon
capacity which depends on the received SINR and the BW
allocated to that user [31].
 
SNR
R D BW ı BWutilised log2 1 C (17)
SNR
where BW accounts for the system BW efficiency of LTE
and SNR accounts for the SNR implementation efficiency
of LTE. The factor ı is a correction factor which nomi-
nally should be equal to one. For Additive White Gaussian
Noise channel conditions, it can be assumed that BW D
0.83, ı D 0.9 and SNR D 1.0 which are used in our
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

simulation [16]. However, the data rate for a BS i with one RBs utilised by HetNet users to the total RBs available
user can be expressed as to HetNet. The total load of HetNet (LHet / composed of
QMeNB, MMieNB and PPeNB can be expressed in
Ri D i Nu,i log2 .1 C SINR/ percentage as follows
 
Prx (18)
D i Li NT,i log2 1 C .1  Lother / Q
Np P P
M P
P
LMeNB,n C LMieNB, m C LPeNB, p
qD1 mD1 pD1
where i D BW ı180 kHz and Nu,i is the number of the LHet .%/ D
NCMCP
utilised RBs by this user, whereas NT,i is the total num- (23)
ber of the RBs available to this BS. Note that the data rate where LMeNB,q , LMiNB,m and LPeNB,p are the load factors for
depends on both the own cell load, Li , and the aggregated the q-th MeNB, m-th MieNB and p-th PeNB, respectively.
load over neighbouring cells Lother . Hence, the achievable Also N C M C P D NBS is the total BSs in HetNet. In
data rate across all utilised RBs by all users within a BS i order to quantify the EE improvement, we define EEstatic
can be written as to be the EE of a network with static power consumption
Nu   and EEadaptive for a network with adaptive power consump-
X Prx,n .1  Lother /
Ri D i log2 1 C (19) tion. Subsequently, EE improvement gain (EEgain / can be
Np,n defined as
nD1

However, the BS’s EE can be defined as the ratio EEadaptive  EEstatic

EEgain D  100% (24)
of the total amount achievable data rate and the total EEadaptive
power consumption.

  However, to evaluate EE, more care must be exercised to

P
Nu
Prx,n .1Lother /
i log2 1 C ensure that EE calculations are performed in a fair man-
Np, n
Ri nD1 ner. For example, if the aforementioned HetNets are being
EEi D D (20)
Pci i Li Poi C .1  i / Poi compared, it should be ensured that both networks are serv-
ing the same traffic load under the same scenario, in order
According to the aforementioned definition of load factor, to guarantee a fair comparison for EE. The proposed Het-
there are two consequences of increasing the load factor. Net EE evaluation algorithm is summarised in Table II.
The first one is that data rate and EE increase as traffic
load increases because of higher number of RBs utilised.
In contrary, increasing the load factor means increasing the
interference level in the cell and hence resulting in lower Table II. Algorithm for assessing EE.
received SINR, which subsequently leads to lower data rate Input: Ptx , Ai , Bi , i , BW for each BS
and EE of the BS as well as for the whole network. Conse- Output: Network’s EE Assessment
quently, the EE of HetNet with all three BSs types, namely, Non-Load adaptive scenario
MeNBs, MieNBs and PeNBs can be formulated as [32] For each BS
1. Set i D 0;
Q
P P
M P
P 2. Set the utilised and available RBs
RMeNB, q C RMieNB, m C RPeNB, p 3. Find the corresponding load factor ;
qD1 mD1 pD1
EEHet D Li D NNTu
Q
P P
M P
P
Pc MeNB, q C PcMieNB, m C Pc PeNB, p 4. Adapt the utilised BW and average SINR in
qD1 mD1 pD1 term of load factor for each BS using (15)
(21) and (16)
where RMeNB,q , RMieNB,m and RPeNB,p denote the achiev- 5. Find achievable data rate, R, using (19)
able average date rate provided by q-th MeNB, m-th 6. Find Pc
MieNB and p-th PeNB with their consumed powers of 7. Find PHet
PcMeNB,q , PcMieNB,m and PcPeNB,p , respectively. In order 8. Calculate the EE and AEE of HetNet within
to assess the EE of HetNet relative to its size, we use the the entire coverage area using (21) and (22)
notion of area energy efficiency (AEE). AEE is defined as 9. end
Load adaptive scenario
the overall data rate per total consumed power per unit area
10. Set 0 < i 6 1
(bit/Joule/unit area) and can be expressed as
11. Repeat Steps 2 to 8
EEHet 12. end
AEEHet D (22) 13. Compare the entire scenarios
AHet
14. Calculate EEgain using (24)
15. Update i , Li
where AHet denotes the total area of the HetNet. However,
16. Return
the load of HetNet can be also defined as the ratio of the

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

3. NUMERICAL RESULTS Table III. Simulation parameters.

AND DISCUSSIONS Parameter Value

Certainly, a straightforward approach for maximising the Carrier frequency 2.6 GHz
EE is to reduce the power consumption of every individual Bandwidth 10 MHz
Channel model 3GPP typical urban [18]
hardware component involved in the network. However, it
Penetration loss 20 dBm [18]
is more important to understand how the software mod-
No. of sectors for 3, 1, 1
ules can be adapted to the hardware and vice versa in order
MeNB, MieNB and
to achieve the goal of an integrated network with highly PeNB
load adaptive energy efficient operation. In this section, we Thermal noise 174 dBm/Hz
present the results of the simulation study to quantify the Noise figure 9 dBm (downlink)
benefits of a load adaptive network operation mode in Het- Coverage degree 95%
Net with one MeNB, one MieNB and one PeNB where MeNB: Ai D 21.45; Bi D 354.44
Power consumption
all these BSs have the same load factor. The load adap- MieNB: Ai D 7.84; Bi D 71.5
parameters
tive operation can be identified as an effective therapeutic PeNB: Ai D 5.5; Bi D 38 [27]
objective for reducing the network power consumption and MeNB, Macro evolved Node-BSs; MieNB, Micro evolved
hence improving the overall EE. Based on network traffic Node-BS; PeNB, Pico evolved Node-BS.
load, the EE improvement potential of adaptive networks
is studied with respect to a reference network with constant
power usage. We first calculate the power consumption for
HetNet with different types of BSs. Each BS may differ
in terms of transmit power, achievable data rate, coverage 106
and EE. The cell radius for each type of BS is calculated
based on a cell coverage requirement of C D 95% by set- 105
E E (bits/joule)

ting the transmit powers for MeNB, MieNB and PeNB to

46, 35 and 30 dBm, respectively. Our previous work in [20] 104

has demonstrated the influence of BW on EE. It is shown

that EE increases significantly as the BW increases. In this 103

paper, however, we choose the most commonly used BW

102
and carrier frequency which are 10 MHz and 2.6 GHz, MeNB w/o interference MeNB with interference

respectively, [26, 33]. The power levels are calculated from 1

MieNB w/o interference
PeNB w/o interference
MieNB with interference
PeNB with interference
10
PL models given in [18]. Then, the achieved data rate is HetNet w/o interference HetNet with interference

determined by the SINR distribution in the cell. 100

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
The IM, which is used to compensate for the impact of
Load Factor (%)
interference coming from other cells, has been associated
with the load factor assigned for HetNet. For the sake of Figure 2. EE as a function of load factor with and without the
simplicity, we assume that the load factor in a cell is equal impact of interference.
to the aggregated load factor of neighbour cells. Notably,
other parameters used in the simulation can be found in
Table III.
Energy efficient network operation can be achieved
4.5
HetNet Achievable Data Rate(bits/sec)

when most of the RBs available to the BS/network are

utilised by its users as demonstrated in Figure 2. As 4

expected, the EE increases as BW is utilised efficiently 3.5

through the RBs, that is, percentage of the load factor is 3
increased. In contrary, increasing load factor in neighbour-
2.5
ing cells means increasing the interference level in the cell
and hence reducing the received SINR which leads to lower 2

data rate and EE of the BS as well as for the whole network. 1.5

1
The relation between achievable data rate of a HetNet
0.5
and its load factor with static power is shown in Figure 3.
It is observed that with static power consumption, the 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
achievable data rate starts to degrade and the impact of
interference is becoming significant when the traffic load
exceeds 74%. It is worth emphasising that the data rate for Figure 3. HetNet’s achievable data rate versus load factor (fixed
each BS in HetNet is determined by assuming that the own power consumption).

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

cell load factor is equal to the aggregated load factor of

neighbour cells.
However, for both cases (with and without interference),
a higher EE can potentially be achieved when (part of the) 104
BSs have the ability to scale their power consumption with

EE (bits/joule)
respect to the traffic load. Figure 4 shows that adaptive
power consumption attains higher EE as compared with the 103
conventional network with static power consumption.
It is also shown that HetNet experiences poor EE when
they are operating under a low traffic load conditions. In
102 Static power consumption w/o interference
order to qualify the adaptation level between the traffic load Adaptive power consumption w/o interference
and the power consumption, a load adaptive factor () is Static power consumption with interference
introduced here to assess the performance of network from Adaptive power consumption with interference
1
10
EE prospective based on the degree of adaptability. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
In general, the EE of network increases as the load adap-
tive factor () increases. However, as shown in Figure 5,
Figure 4. EE HetNet versus traffic load.
 has less impact on EE performance at high load situa-
tion due to the significant impact of interference. Hence,
at low to medium traffic load conditions, the EE increases
dramatically as  increases.
It can be concluded that fixed (high) loaded network can
operate with elements/subsystems with almost static power
consumption (have small values of ) while there is a
slight impact of adoption degree on its EE performance. In
contrast, networks with components/subsystems which can
adaptively scale their power consumption according to the
traffic loads are suited for fluctuating (low) load conditions.
In case of load adaptive operation, the network power
consumption is mostly affected by both the load factor and
, whereas the achievable data rate is affected only by the
load factor. The power consumption of HetNet as a func-
tion of its traffic load for different levels of adoption (/ is
demonstrated in Figure 6. It is obvious that when  D 1,
the HetNet is considered fully adaptive and would ideally Figure 5. EE of HetNet as a function of  and the total load.
consume no power when idle and gradually consume more
power as the traffic load increases while it has fixed power 8000
consumption when  is equal to zero for all BSs in HetNet.
However, both fully adaptive operations described ear- 7000
lier are not attainable in the existing networks and network
6000
elements. The reasonable load adaptive factor should range
between 0 and 1 (0 <  < 1) because there is always a con- 5000
siderable impact of traffic load on the equipments power
consumption. 4000 Static Power Consumption

Overall, such cognition gives a confidence to the usage 3000

of the proposed model in the future studies that focus on
improving the load adaptive factor of already installed net- 2000
work equipments. Also, it should be noted that if it is
1000
possible to obtain perfect energy proportionality of all net-
working elements ( D 1), sleep modes would not be 0
necessary. Another metric, namely, AEE metric is also 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
used to take into consideration the effects of cell size on
EE performance.
Figure 6. HetNet power consumption versus traffic load for
As we can see from Figure 7, improving the  will
different .
result in maximising the AEE. For instance, at low traf-
fic load (20%), the maximum value of AEE is increased
from approximately 387 to 652 and 1430 bits/joule/km2 by cases are 841, 1130 and 1555 bits/joule/km2 for medium
improving  from 0 to 50% and 90%, respectively. More- traffic load (50%) and 859 to 909 and 953 bits/joule/km2
over, the maximal values of the AEE in these three different for high load (90%), which corresponds to the load adap-

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

10000

1600

1400
8000

1200

1000

E E (bits /jo ule )

6000

800 Static Power Consumption

600
4000

400

200
2000

0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
Time (hours)
Figure 7. AEE versus traffic load for different .
Figure 8. EE versus daily traffic load profile for different .
Table IV. AEE for different combinations of .

 for MeNB, 100

High Load
MieNB and Low Load Medium Load High Load 90 Medium Load
PeNB (20%) (50%) (90%) Low Load
80
0,0,0 406.01 851.86 837.84 70
0,0,0.5 406.96 853.11 838.09
60
0,0.5,0.5 409.1 855.9 838.64
0.5,0.5,0.5 676.68 1135.8 881.94 50
0,0,1 407.93 854.37 838.34 40
0,0.5,1 410.07 857.17 838.88
30
0,1,1 412.24 859.99 839.43
1,1,1 2030 1703.7 930.94 20

AEE, area energy efficiency; MeNB, Macro evolved Node- 10

BSs; MieNB, Micro evolved Node-BS; PeNB, Pico evolved
0
Node-BS. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

tation ratios of 0, 0.5 and 0.9, respectively. Figure 7 also
illustrates the significant impact of interference on the AEE
of HetNet as the traffic load increases assuming that the
degree of load adaptation () is the same for all BSs
in HetNet.
Also, it can be shown that the maximum network AEE
(in bits/joule/km2 / with static power consumption (986.4)
is achieved at 74% traffic load.
For  D 0.5, the maximum AEE (1176) is achieved at
63% traffic load, whereas for  D 0.9, the maximum AEE
(1588) is attained at 39% traffic load. This shift in AEE
peaks reflects the fact that the AEE becomes more sensitive
to interference (increasing in traffic load change) at higher
adaptation degree ( ).
However, small BSs such as MieNBs and PeNBs may
have larger values of  than that of MeNBs because
they do not usually have either a big power amplifier or
cooling equipment. Therefore, the AEE for different com-
bination of  for MeNB, MieNB and PeNB for different
loads is shown in Table IV for HetNet with one MeNB,
one MieNB and one PeNB. The arrangement (0, 0, 0)
means that all BSs have static power consumption, whereas
(1, 1, 1) assumes that all BSs are fully load adaptive
Figure 9. EE improvement gain versus  for different loads.
power consumption while the more realistic scenarios are
the cases between these scenarios in which MieNBs and
PeNBs may have larger values of  than that of MeNBs.
Also, it is clear that AEE increases as  increases and
the higher AEE can be achieved at low load conditions.
In order to realistically assess the EE performance of
HetNet, it is essential to identify the spatial and temporal
variation of the users and their associated traffic demands.
Given the daily traffic load profiles and the distribution of
deployment types, the EE of HetNet over a day can be
evaluated as a function of traffic load variations. Figure 8
demonstrates the EE of a HetNet with one MeNB, one
MieNB and one PeNB for different values of  based on
the 24-h traffic profile provide by Greentouch [21].
As observed in the earlier results, the HetNet experi-
ences poor EE when they are operating under low traffic
load conditions. It can be shown that EE curves degrade
in the early morning hours (3–8 AM) excluding these
with fully load adaptive operation mode. When the traf-
fic load is the lowest (around 6:30 AM), it can be seen

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

that the EE increased from 1140 (bits/joule) with con- minimum is provided. Precisely, Equation (5) has been
ventional operation to 8385 (bits/joule) for fully adaptive derived to find the lower and upper bounds for the cell
operation which is equivalent to more than 86% improve- coverage area. The aim is to prove that
ment in network EE performance. This is because the EE
perceived by HetNet is directly related to the average RBs’
ZRg  
utilisation of all BSs in HetNet, that is, their traffic loads. 2 r
Besides, the power consumption of HetNet increases as  CD 2 r Q.a C b ln dr
Rg Rg
decreases even it serves the same traffic load. It can also be 0 (A1)
   
observed from Figure 8 that the EE performance becomes 2  2ab 2  2ab
D Q.a/ C exp Q
the same for all scenarios at traffic loads higher than b2 b
90% as they have the same power consumption and same
RBs’ utilisation. The Q-function can be also written as
Furthermore, it can be observed that high AEE can be
obtained when equipments have high values of  at low !
Z1
loads compared with high load conditions. Figure 9 high- 1 x2
lights the vast potential for EE gains by introducing the Q.a/ D p exp  dx
2 2
load adaptive operation of BSs at low loads. It shows that a (A2)
 
up to 10%, 40% and 80% EE gains can be attained for 1 1 a
D  erf p
high, medium and low traffic loads, respectively, using 2 2 2
the proposed load adaptive models as compared with
conventional system. Now, by using the following substitution, y D a C
b ln Rrg . Therefore, r D 0 ! y D 1 and also, r D
4. CONCLUSION  
Rg ! y D a. Moreover, we have r D Rg exp ya b and
R  
In this paper, a framework for evaluating EE in LTE hetero- dr D bg exp ya b dy . Substituting all these elements in
geneous wireless networks is developed. The load adaptive the first line of Equation (A1), the result will result to
network operation can be identified as a new therapeutic
target for reducing the network power consumption and Za 
2 2.y  a/
hence improving the overall EE. The benefits of a load Q.a/ D exp Q.y/ dy (A3)
b b
adaptive network operation in HetNet has been qualified 1
and presented. Numerical results show that the proposed
load adaptive schemes can significantly improve the net- Next, integration by parts can be explained as follows. For
work EE. Moreover, it has been observed that highly any two differentiable functions u, v
loaded network can operate with almost static power con-
sumption, whereas networks with components/subsystems
can adaptively scale their power consumption according to Zx1 Zx1
the traffic loads that are suited for fluctuated (low) load u dv D u vjxx10  v du (A4)
conditions. Up to 10%, 40% and 80% EE improvement x0 x0
gains have been attained for high, medium, and low traffic
load conditions, respectively, using the proposed models. In order to apply the rule (A4) to (A3), it can be assumed
In addition, it is also shown that up to 86% EE improve- that u D Q.y/ and v D (b/2) exp (2y/b):
ment can be achieved under full load adaptive network
operation using a realistic daily traffic profile. Overall, the
 Za  
proposed evaluation model is essential to assess the net- 2a 2y
C D exp Q.y/ d exp
work EE and can be used in future studies that focus b b
on improving the adaptation level of the already installed 1
8 9
  ˇa Za  
network equipments. Future works should extend this 2a < 2y ˇˇ 2y =
framework by taking into consideration the EE of UEs D exp Q.y/ exp  exp dQ.y/
b : b ˇ1 b ;
especially to understand the impacts of the proposed model 1
8 9
on the UEs.   ˇ Za  
2a < 2a ˇˇ 2y =
D exp Q.a/ exp  exp dQ.y/
b : b ˇ b ;
APPENDIX A: 1
(A5)
In this appendix, the derivation of the analytical form of It is worth reminding that exp .1/ D 0. The next task is
the expected percentage of locations within a cell where to find the last integral in (A5). For doing so, the next step
the received power at these locations is above a given is to find the explicit form of dQ(y) as

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett
 A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

d 2 exp.a2 =2/
dQ.y/ D Q.y/ dy p <C
dy .1 C a2 / Œb2 C .2  ab/2  2
  
d 1 1 y (A13)
D  erf p dy (A6)
dy 2 2 2 2 exp.a2 =2/ 2
! < p , >a>0
1 y2 a.2  ab/ 2 b
Dp exp  dy
2 2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
where the following identity has been used
This work was collaboratively carried out by Power Engi-
d 1 neering Center, Universiti Tenaga Nasional and MIMOS
erf .y/ D p exp.y2 / (A7) Berhad.
dy 

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