On increasing the energy efficiency of cognitive radio network base stations

Energy efficiency in cognitive radio networks is continually receiving numerous attention due to the environmental and economic impacts it has on the network. Although in a centralized cognitive radio network architecture most components and factors tend to contribute to its high energy consumption, but the radio base stations is seen to make up a very high percentage of the overall energy consumed in the network. In this regard, an effective measure needs to be employed to better the energy efficiency of the network. In this paper, a base station sleeping mechanism is proposed to put unnecessary and idle base stations to sleep during low traffic conditions and also to decide which base stations in the network goes into sleep mode. The effectiveness of the proposed mechanism is evaluated through simulation and the results reveal that the energy efficiency of the network can be significantly enhanced by adequately putting idle or unnecessary base stations in the network into sleep mode.