An energy-efficient user offloading algorithm for cellular network in base station sleep mode

Base station sleep mode is an effective method to reduce the energy consumption of cellular networks. Taking into account a cellular network, its central base station (BS) can turn into sleep mode when the traffic is low and the users in this cell can access to neighbor active cells. A user offloading algorithm for the sleeping cell is investigated. The energy consumption of the cellular network in sleep mode is analyzed first, based on which an optimization problem on user offloading is proposed from minimizing the total energy consumption. Then a practical and effective algorithm is proposed which considered about the traffic load balance. Several simulations are conducted and the results turn out that the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the total energy consumption.