Interference-aware distributed control of cell discontinuous transmission

As a main enabler for the next generation (5G) cellular networks, network densification faces challenges in inter-cell interference and energy consumption. Cell discontinuous transmission (DTX) can be employed to reduce both energy consumption of base stations (BSs) and inter-cell interference. In this paper we study the control problem of cell DTX in dense small cell networks (DSCNs). We firstly formulate the network energy efficiency optimization problem. Then a centralized heuristic DTX control algorithm is presented. In order to address the issues of complexity and scalability of the centralized solution, an interference-aware distributed DTX control algorithm is proposed. Discussions on algorithm complexity and implementation are provided. The proposed algorithms are evaluated with numerical simulations. Results show that at high load region, the proposed algorithms can not only enhance network capacity by reducing inter-cell interference by up to 60% but also increase network energy efficiency by switching BSs into micro-sleep mode by 67%.