Energy efficient multicast in interference-limited heterogeneous networks

In this paper, we study the energy efficiency of multicast service in interference-limited heterogeneous networks (HetNets). We propose a new power model for base stations (BSs) where the impact of system load, antenna port, carrier number, as well as the power supply and cooling system, is together taken into consideration. Furthermore, we define network energy efficiency for multicast service as the ratio of the number of supported users and the total consumed network power, and derive its closed-form based on the power model, then we obtain the optimal transmission threshold also in closed-form for arbitrary multicast deployment, e.g., power consumption level, node density, multicast channel number, target data rate, etc. The analysis shows that our proposed scheme could achieve the highest network energy efficiency performance compared with other solutions, e.g., fixed transmission rate schemes and unicast schemes. Finally, simulation and numerical results are presented to verify our analysis.