Energy efficiency analysis of a C-RAN with distance—Based power control

Reducing the global energy consumption is an important goal of fifth generation (5G) networks. The cloud-radio access network (C-RAN) along with power control mechanism can potentially offer the much sought after relief in energy consumption by enabling centralized processing. In this paper, a tunable downlink distance-based power control mechanism is considered and its effects on network-level coverage probability, along with energy efficiency (EE) of C-RAN are studied. Finding from analysis based on stochastic geometry reveals that distance-based power control can provide up to a seven-fold increase in the EE of C-RAN without power control. The significance of this finding lies in showing that by carefully tuning the transmit power, interference reduces and the achievable average rate improves, resulting in increased EE.