Energy Efficient Throughput Aware Traffic Load Balancing in Green Cellular Networks

• Main Authors: Abu Jahid, Mohammed H. Alsharif, Peerapong Uthansakul, Jamel Nebhen, Ayman A. Aly
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 2021-01-01
• Series: IEEE Access
• Subjects: Energy efficiency; coordinated multipoint; hybrid power supply; centralized RAN; load balancing; cell zooming
• Online Access: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9462078/

With the augmentation of affordable multimedia wireless gadgets, the ubiquitous availability of the internet access, and the rapid pace of mobile traffic motivate research towards fifth generation (5G) communications to realize energy-efficient cloud radio access networks (C-RAN) with guaranteed quality of experience. Exploiting green energy harvesting for powering the C-RAN substantially alleviates the energy procurement from the utility grid, carbon footprint, and operational expenses. In this paper, we propose a new dynamic point selection coordinated multipoint (DPS CoMP) based load balancing paradigm emphasizing achievable throughput and energy efficiency (EE) by reducing utility grid consumption from a network level perspective. This paper investigates the radio efficiency, EE, and average on-grid energy saving addressing the key challenges of tempo-spatial dynamics of traffic intensity and renewable energy (RE) generation under a wide range of network setup. Endeavoring load balancing technique strives a balance in network utilities such as green energy utilization and user association based on BS coordination technique in a cluster. Provision of cell sleep approach is contemplated for further energy saving by turning off lightly loaded base stations (BSs) during low traffic arrivals. The proposed CoMP based load balancing algorithm proficiently manages resource block allocation to the new users and elevated the energy efficiency over the conventional location and traffic centric mechanisms. Extensive system-level simulations manifest that the suggested framework enables an adjustable trade-off between radio efficiency and EE, and saves 22% on-grid power consumption and increases EE index by 32%. Afterward, an exhaustive comparison of the proposed method with the existing schemes is pledged for further validation highlighting sustainable 5G wireless systems.