Access Point Switch ON/OFF Strategies for Green Cell-Free Massive MIMO Networking

The combination of user-centric network densification and distributed massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) operation has recently brought along a new paradigm in the wireless communications arena, referred to as cell-free massive MIMO networking. In these networks, a large number of distributed access points (APs), coordinated by a central processing unit (CPU), cooperate to coherently serve a large number of mobile stations (MSs) in the same time/frequency resource. Similar to what has been traditionally done with conventional cellular networks, cell-free massive MIMO networks will be dimensioned to provide the required quality of service (QoS) to MSs under heavy traffic load conditions, and thus they might be underutilized during low traffic load periods, leading to an inefficient use of both spectral and energy resources. Aiming at the implementation of green cell-free massive MIMO networks, this paper proposes and analyzes the performance of different AP switch ON/OFF (ASO) strategies designed to dynamically turn ON/OFF some of the APs based on the number and/or location of the active MSs in the network. The proposed framework considers line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) links between APs and MSs, the use of different antenna array architectures at the access points (APs), suitably characterized by array-dependent spatial correlation matrices, and specific power consumption models for APs, MSs and fronthaul links between the APs and the CPU. Numerical results show that the use of properly designed ASO strategies in cell-free massive MIMO networks clearly improve the achievable energy efficiency. Moreover, they also reveal the existing trade-offs among the achievable energy efficiency, the available network-state information, and the hardware configuration (i.e., number of APs, number of transmit antennas per AP, and number of MSs).