User association and remote radio head selection strategy in cloud radio access networks

Cloud radio access network (C-RAN) is introduced as a promising architecture to meet the ever-increasing mobile data traffic. In this paper, we focus on the minimization of both transport network power consumption and transmission power of remote radio heads (RRHs). First, we develop a user association strategy in order to better utilize wireless resources of the active RRHs. Then, an efficient local search algorithm is developed in order to select a subset of RRHs with the minimum total power consumption while satisfying a series of network constraints. Numerical results indicate that the proposed user association strategy can utilize the wireless resources efficiently and effectively. Moreover, our RRH selection scheme can significantly reduce the total power consumption of C-RANs.