Performance Modeling and Energy Conservation in Mobile Networks

Abstract

Energy conservation in mobile network is a growing concern for mobile operators. The motivations behind it are not only to pursue higher profitability but also to reduce negative environmental effects. Researchers and mobile operators have been keeping exploring the potential and possible energy conservation schemes and trying to make a tradeoff between energy efficiency and Quality of Service (QoS). In this paper, a 49-cell mobile network is modeled by Markov chain approach and the relationship between traffic pattern and network performance is investigated. Then an analytical energy saving scheme is studied, characterizing the amount of energy that can be conserved by switching off part of base stations when it is not necessary due to the low traffic load. First it is assumed that any fraction of base stations can be switched off to optimize the energy saving, and then constrains of cellular base station configuration are taken into consideration and performance of the saving scheme with different configurations are compared.