The operation of cellular network infrastructure incurs significant electrical energy consumption. From the perspective of cellular network operators, reducing this consumption is not only a matter of showing environmental responsibility, but also of substantially reducing their operational expenditure. We discuss how dynamic operation of cellular base stations, in which redundant base stations are switched off during periods of low traffic such as at night, can provide significant energy savings. We quantitatively estimate these potential savings through a first-order analysis based on real cellular traffic traces and information regarding base station locations in a part of Manchester, United Kingdom. We also discuss a number of open issues pertinent to implementing such energy-efficient dynamic base station operation schemes, such as various approaches to ensure coverage, and interoperator coordination.

In this paper, we investigate dynamic base station (BS) switching to reduce energy consumption in wireless cellular networks. Specifically, we formulate a general energy minimization problem pertaining to BS switching that is known to be a difficult combinatorial problem and requires high computational complexity as well as large signaling overhead. We propose a practically implementable switching-on/off based energy saving (SWES) algorithm that can be operated in a distributed manner with low computational complexity. A key design principle of the proposed algorithm is to turn off a BS one by one that will minimally affect the network by using a newly introduced notion of network-impact, which takes into account the additional load increments brought to its neighboring BSs. In order to further reduce the signaling and implementation overhead over the air and backhaul, we propose three other heuristic versions of SWES that use the approximate values of network-impact as their decision metrics. We describe how the proposed algorithms can be implemented in practice at the protocol-level and also estimate the amount of energy savings through a first-order analysis in a simple setting. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the SWES algorithms can significantly reduce the total energy consumption, e.g., we estimate up to 50-80% potential savings based on a real traffic profile from a metropolitan urban area.

Reducing the energy consumption of cellular wireless access networks is not only beneficial for the global environment but also makes commercial sense for telecommunication operators. Since access networks are designed to support peak time traffic, the utilization of base stations can be very inefficient during off-peak time because the traffic profile is time varying. We study the dynamic switching of base stations (BS) to reduce the energy consumption considering the time varying characteristic of the traffic profile. We show via analysis that the mean and variance of traffic profile and the BS density are the dominant factors that determine the amount of energy saving that can be achieved. Simulations using ideal and real traffic profiles are used to quantify the potential savings from dynamic BS switching in a realistic setting.

This letter presents a new full duplex relay (FDR) system that features more efficient use of time resource and antennas. The proposed FDR system is constructed based on time and antenna-sharing and elimination of underlying interference. The underlying interference caused by time- and antenna-sharing is eliminated using precoding. We propose a design for the precoder and decoder, and investigate the achievable rate of the proposed FDR system when the precoder and decoder are applied. Simulation results show improved achievable rate and BER performances with the proposed FDR system compared to half duplex and conventional full duplex relay systems.

In spite of their potential to improve the performance of wireless communication systems, relay-based communication systems face significant challenges, resource wastage. In this article we discuss resource efficiency in relay systems, particularly in two-way and full-duplex relay systems that utilize multiple antennas and improved duplexing to enhance system efficiency. We compare in detail the features, frame structures, performances, advantages and disadvantages, and technical challenges associated with TWRs and FDRs. Using illustrations of quantitative performance, we demonstrate that both of these approaches can efficiently reduce resource wastage in relay-based communication systems.

In this paper, a framework for evaluating the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of amplify-and-forward (AF) relay-assisted cooperative transmission is provided in the presence of imperfect channel estimation. First, the AF relaying is classified into two cases - a variable gain and a fixed gain. For each case, the closed-form average BER is derived by using the moment-generating function (MGF) of the effective output SNR, which quantifies the SNR penalty due to the noisy channel estimate. Moreover, the asymptotic BER bound is also provided at a high SNR regime for the insight of our approach. In particular, the effect of the feedforward delay on informing the source-relay channel estimate as to the destination is presented in the variable-gain relay. Numerical investigation shows that the analytic result makes an exact match with the simulation, and the comparative superiority between the fixed- and variable-gain relay is discussed.