OFDMA Base Station Power-Saving via Joint Power Control and DTX in Cellular Systems

In this paper, we extend the previously proposed power-saving Resource Allocation using Power control and Sleep (RAPS) algorithm to the interference environment. The RAPS algorithm allocates resources, power and Discontinuous Transmission (DTX) time slots jointly for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDMA) downlink resource scheduling such that Base Station (BS) supply power consumption is reduced while providing guaranteed link rates. The RAPS scheduler was previously proposed and studied only as a single-cell mechanism. It is here adapted to and tested in the multi-cell interference setting. The resulting dynamical system is analyzed with respect to convergence, power consumption and load dependence. It is found that the Signal-to- Interference-and-Noise-Ration (SINR) distribution in the network is greatly improved and average power consumption can be reduced by around 50% in comparison to a Proportional Fair (PF) scheduling benchmark.