Energy Efficiency of Heterogeneous Cellular Network

The growing energy consumption driven by dramatic increases in the number of users and data usage becomes the key issue for operators in meeting demands on cost reduction and environmental impact targets. Deployment of low power base stations or relay stations in traditional macro cells is expected to reduce the total energy consumption of cellular radio networks. This paper investigates the cell's energy efficiency and area energy efficiency measured by "bit per Joule" and "energy efficiency per unit area". The simulation results suggest that introducing pico stations into macro cells to form heterogeneous network can achieve improved energy efficiency and increased throughput as well.