TRANSACTIONS ON EMERGING TELECOMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014)

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/ett.2835

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Energy-aware load adaptive framework for LTE

heterogeneous network
Ayad Atiyah Abdulkafi1,2,3*, David Chieng2 , Tiong Sieh Kiong1 , Alvin Ting2 , Johnny Koh1
and Abdulaziz M. Ghaleb4
1 Power Engineering Center, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Selangor, Malaysia
2 Wireless Communication Cluster, MIMOS Berhad, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
3 College of Engineering, Tikrit University, Salahaldin, Iraq
4 Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC), Doha, Qatar

ABSTRACT
One of the main approaches for improving the network energy efficiency (EE) is through the introduction of load adaptive
techniques, where the networks components/subsystems are switched off when the network is lightly loaded. Optimising
such a dynamic operation in a heterogeneous network (HetNet) remains an active topic of research. In this paper, a traffic
load-adaptive model that aims to evaluate the EE of base stations in Long Term Evolution (LTE) HetNet is presented.First,
a model that simulates the load-adaptive power consumption behaviour of LTE HetNet is developed. In this regard, a load
adaptation factor is introduced to assess the networks EE performance. The model also adapts and predicts the achievable
data rate of each base station with respect to the traffic load. Our study shows that the fully load-adaptive LTE HetNet can
significantly improve networks EE up to 10%, 40%, and 80% for high, medium, and low loads, respectively, as compared
to the conventional non load-adaptive HetNet. In addition, we show that the full adaptive network operation can achieve
significant EE gains under a realistic daily traffic profile up to 86%. The proposed evaluation model is essential to assess
the network EE and can be used in future studies that focus on improving the adaptation level of the already installed
network equipments. Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
*Correspondence
Ayad Atiyah Abdulkafi, Power Engineering Center, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Selangor, Malaysia.
E-mail: al.ayad@yahoo.com
Received 27 January 2014; Revised 20 March 2014; Accepted 27 March 2014

1. INTRODUCTION
In current wireless networks, although the traffic loads
fluctuate significantly over time, the power consumed is
found to be nearly constant. In other words, the power consumption of these networks is generally independent of
the traffic load because they are often dimensioned according to peak traffic load plus a reserve [1, 2]. In order to
improve the energy efficiency (EE), the consumed power
in the base station (BS) should scale as close as possible to
the amount of traffic load served, which can in principle be
accomplished by using more efficient and traffic load adaptive hardware equipments and software modules [3, 4].
Taking advantage of cooperative communication [5], the
EE of cellular networks can be improved by reducing the
number of active BSs required in an area by adapting the
network layout according to mobile users traffic demands
[68]. The work in [8] offers one of the earliest insights
on load-adaptive operation where the authors propose the
Copyright 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

usage of cell zooming. The proposed scheme maintains

the coverage and reduces the number of active cells by
changing the coverage pattern of cells based on traffic load
and hence offering potential power consumption reduction.
In [7], the overall power consumption of a telecommunication network is estimated through analysing the power
requirements of network equipment and the amount of traffic received from the users. The authors claim that future
networks with sleep mode and load adaptation enabled will
save a consistent amount of energy.
Based on user context and network service, the work in
[9] applies energy efficient decision algorithms on multiradio access technology networks in order to dynamically
adapt network capacity to the actual traffic load demands
by reconfiguring the network elements. Bandwidth (BW)
adaptation, capacity adaptation (CAP), and micro discontinuous transmission (micro DTX) techniques have been
proposed by [10] to save energy in Long Term Evolution
(LTE) networks. With the BW adaptation technique, during

A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

medium or low traffic load, the BW is stepwise downscaled so that a lower number of resource blocks (RBs)
are allocated. CAP is accomplished by limiting the number of scheduled LTE RBs. When resource utilisation is
relatively high, the micro DTX technique allows the unoccupied resources to be more flexibly utilised where the
fixed steps of BW and CAP adaptation limit the energy
saving potential [10]. The work in [11, 12] shows that the
upper bound of EE can be achieved by adapting both transmit power and its allocation according to the channel states
and the circuit power consumption.
The emerging LTE heterogeneous network (HetNet)
architecture offers a vast potential for conserving power
using load-adaptive techniques. In this type of cellular
network, Macro evolved Node-BSs (MeNBs) are complemented with lower transmit power cells such as Micro
evolved Node-BS (MieNBs) and Pico evolved Node-BS
(PeNBs) [6, 13]. While MeNBs ensure permanent coverage, smaller cells can be turned on and off according to the
traffic load.
In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive model
for evaluating load-adaptive network operation in LTEHetNet. In the model, the consumed power and the achievable data rates are adapted to match the varying traffic
loads. Within this work, a new load adaptive factor that
represents the load-adaptive power consumption behaviour
of each BS is introduced. On top of insights gained by
deriving the relationships between BS traffic load, data rate
and power consumption, an evaluation methodology for
network operator to assess the EE of their HetNets is developed. The remainder of this paper is organised as follows.
In Section 2, the coverage, traffic load, power and data
rate models are discussed. Section 3 presents the numerical results and discussions while the concluding remarks
are presented in Section 4.

2. NETWORK MODELS
We consider a HetNet model which consists of a mixture
of MeNBs, MieNBs, and PeNBs as shown in Figure 1. In
the following subsections, we define the cell coverage area,
traffic load, power and EE models.

Figure 1. HetNet model.

2.1. Coverage model

The required degree of coverage provided by a site depends
on the received power at the user equipment (UE) and its
sensitivity [14]. The received power Prx (in dBm) from a
BS at a distance of r and angle  from the main lobe of the
antenna is given by [15]
Prx . , r/ D Ptx  Ploss . , r/

(1)

where Ptx is the transmitted power and Ploss is the aggregated signal losses due to path loss (PL), outdoorindoor
penetration loss (Pe / and radiation pattern (Ah). Ploss (in
dB) can be expressed as
Ploss . , r/ D PL.r/ C Pe C Ah. /

(2)

Base stations are classified as MeNBs, MieNBs and

PeNBs based on their transmitted power and on their
antenna heights.
The reference sensitivity level is the minimum power
received at which a throughput requirement is fulfilled. It is
measured with the transmitter operating at full power. The
reference sensitivity level, Pmin , according to [16, 17] is
Pmin .dBm/ D Np C NF C SINRreq C IL  Gd

(3)

where Np is the thermal noise level in the specified BW

defined as
Np D kT C 10 log10 .NRB . 180 kHz/

(4)

According to LTE specifications [17], the thermal noise

density, kT, D 174 dBm/Hz where Boltzmanns constant
k D 1.380662  1023 and receiver temperature, T is
15 C. NF is the prescribed maximum noise figure for
the UE, which is a measure of the signal-to-interferenceplus-noise ratio (SINR) degradation caused by elements in
the RF signal chain. LTE defines an NF requirement of
9 dB for the UE. SINRreq is the SINR requirement for the
chosen modulation and coding scheme, IL is the implementation margin and Gd represents the diversity gain. It is
worth mentioning that Gd is assumed 3 dB for MeNB and
zero for small cells. In LTE, the BW can be expressed as
BW D NRB  180 kHz, where NRB is the number of RBs
and 180 kHz is the BW of one RB. After Pmin is calculated,
the PL in formula (2) can be figured out. With this PL and
a particular propagation model, the cell radius can be calculated. The propagation models defined by 3GPP [18] for
urban area are used in our simulation.
The cell coverage area C, which is the fraction of cell
area where the received power of user terminal is above
Pmin , can be written as [14]




2  2ab
2  ab
(5)
C D Q.a/ C exp
Q
b
b2
where the Q-function is defined as the probability that a
Gaussian random variable X with mean 0 and variance 1 is
greater than z
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

1
Q.z/ D prob.X > z/ D p
2

!
Z1
x2
exp 
dx
2

(6)

and
aD

Pmin  Prx .Rg /

dB

bD

10 log10 .e/
dB

(7)

where is the PL exponent and  dB is the standard

deviation of shadow fading, whereas Prx .Rg / represents
the received power at cell edge .Rg /. Hence, the coverage area of a cell is a function of receiver sensitivity Pmin ,
carrier frequency f , transmitted power Ptx , PL exponent
and shadowing standard deviation  dB [19, 20]. By
limiting the coverage area to a certain size, the network
performance in terms of achievable data rates and efficiencies within each BS can be estimated. Therefore, based
on Equation (5), the lower and upper bounds for cell coverage area can be written as (see Appendix A for detail
derivation)
 2
2 exp a
2
<C
p
.1 C a2 / b2 C .2  ab/2  2
(8)
 2
2 exp a
2
2
, >a>0
<
p
b
a.2  ab/ 2
The specific procedure to find the coverage area for each
type of BS in HetNet is summarised in Table I.
2.2. Traffic load model
According to [21], the distribution of traffic load is typically non-uniform across the cells and the traffic load
volume is observed to fluctuate significantly over time.
Because of that, it is important to look into methods that
evaluate the EE of wireless network, which exhibits such

Table I. Algorithm for estimating the BS cell size.

Input: Ptx SINR req , BW for each BS
Output: Maximum cell radius for different BSs
1.
Set the environment scenario and BS type
2.
Find Pmin based on MCS, BW and NF.
3.
Initialize cell radius r D 0 for the entire BS.
4.
Find Prx at distance r based on link budget
calculations.
5.
While Prx > Pmin
6.
Calculate the coverage degree C .
7.
while C > 95
8.
r D r C r
9.
if C <D 95
10.
Maximum cell radius D r  r
11.
end
12.
end

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

a behaviour. The load factor of a BS can be defined as the

ratio of the RBs utilised by the BSs users to the total RBs
available to this BS. It describes the portion of RBs which
are allocated for users, where zero and full load correspond
to no active user in the cell and providing one or more users
with all resources available, respectively. The traffic load,
L, of a BS has been defined as [22]
LD

Nu
NT

(9)

where Nu is the number of the utilised RBs by BSs users,

whereas NT represents the total number of RBs available to
that BS. In this paper, an appropriate evaluation framework
for load adaptive network operation is proposed, wherein
the actual traffic load determines the networks power
consumption and its achievable data rate as well as the
network EE.
2.3. Power models
In the following section, the power consumption of BS is
expressed as a function of the traffic load. The following
theoretical models are employed to describe in a simple yet
effective manner the relation between the consumed power
and the actual traffic load. The linear relationship between
the transmission and operational power consumptions of a
BS i can be represented by [3, 23, 24]
Poi D Nsec . Nant . .Ai . Ptx C Bi /

(10)

where Nsec and Nant denote the BSs number of sectors and
the number of antennas per sector, respectively. Po and Ptx
denote the operational power consumption and transmitted power, respectively. The coefficient Ai accounts for the
power consumption that scales with the transmitted power,
whereas Bi is the power offsets consumed independently of
the transmitted power.
However, the idea of load adaptive network power is to
enable the network power consumption to scale with load
rather than being static. Therefore, in this study, the BS
power consumption has been modelled using two types of
power consumptions, namely, the static power consumption and the dynamic power consumption. When turned
on, each BS consumes a constant amount of power (fixed
power) depending on the BSs type regardless of the traffic
load. This amount of power is always required just for the
equipments to be powered on. The second part is the adaptive power consumption, which consists of an amount of
power proportional to the traffic load. The adaptation level
between the traffic load and the power consumption has
been modelled in term of load adaptive factor ./. Thus,
the total power consumed by BS i is the sum of the static
and adaptive power consumptions.
Pci D i . Li . Poi C .1  i / Poi

(11)

A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

where Pc is the overall consumed power of BS i and Po

is its maximum operational power when it is fully utilised,
that is, L D 1. When  D 0, the BS would consume
a fixed amount of power regardless of the traffic load. In
order to achieve a traffic load-adaptive operation, a direct
proportionality between the consumed power and traffic
load is required. The full adaptive operation (i.e., ideal
case  D 1) is far from being true in existing networks
and network components [1], in which a BS is assumed
to be fully adaptive and would ideally consume no power
when it is inactive and consume more power as the traffic
load increases. These types of BSs are still far from reality because several equipments in the BSs still consume
power while idle. However, there is a considerable impact
of traffic load variations on the BS power consumption
[25]. Therefore, this power adaptation model improves the
network EE by adapting the BSs power consumption corresponding to the traffic load in the network, that is, based
on the traffic load demand, parts of the BS such as carriers or sectors or even the BS itself are switched on/off.
It is worth mentioning that switching off the BS or parts
of it could have an impact on the UE performance as the
UE has to connect to another BS that is further away with
a potential increase of the UE power consumption [26].
However, this paper only focuses on the networks side
EE and does not consider the power consumption of UE.
Besides, the small BSs such as MieNBs and PeNBs may
have larger values of  than that of MeNBs as they do not
usually have large power amplifiers or cooling equipments
[3]. Hence, the overall power PHet drained by HetNet can
be represented by the sum of powers consumed of all
its BSs
PHet D

NBS
X

Pci C Pbh

(12)

iD1

where NBS is the total sum of BSs in HetNet and Pbh is the
backhaul power consumption which can be added to the
overall network power consumption [27].

are the interfering signals, especially when frequency reuse

1 is applied [28]. Therefore, the downlink IM depends on
the aggregated load factor of neighbouring cells, Lother ;
when one increases, the other also increases [29, 30]
IM D

1
1  Lother

(14)

For each point of the cell, the SINR received from the
MeNB and the closest small cells is estimated. The aim
is to calculate the achievable data rate of the UE located
at this point. Throughout these calculations, the interferences generated from surrounding BSs are taken into
account. After rearranging and substituting (14) into (13),
the received SINR can be written as follows
SINR D SNR .1  Lother / D

Prx
.1  Lother /
Np

(15)

As the traffic load of neighbouring cells increases, a higher

degree of interference is experienced, and subsequently,
the average SINR in the cell is reduced. Similarly, the
increase in interference from neighbouring cells will also
degrade the data rate of the cell. The actual (achievable)
data rate within each BS is calculated according to the
SINR and the utilised BW. As previously mentioned, the
BW in LTE can be expressed in terms of the number of
RBs multiplied by their BW which is 180 kHz for one
RB (i.e. BWD NRB  BWRB /. Consequently, the total
BW available to the BS can be expressed in terms of the
total number of RBs available to that BS multiplied by
their BW (i.e. BWTotal D NT . BWRB /, whereas the utilised
BW, BWutilised , which determines the achievable (actual)
data rate, is a function of the number of the utilised RBs
multiplied by their BW, such that
BWutilised D Nu . 180 kHz
D L . BWTotal

(16)

D L . NT . 180 kHz
2.4. Energy efficiency models
First, a constant interference level all over the cell has
been assumed in which the interference value has to be
computed with respect to the actual traffic load. The interference analysis is carried out as part of the proposed
model to determine the interference margin (IM) and to
derive the SINR in the cell. The IM can be defined
as a relation between signals received with and without
interference as
IM D

Prx =Np
SNR
D
Prx =.Iown C Iother C Np /
SINR

(13)

where Iown is the own cell interference which is close to

zero due to the orthogonal subcarriers in LTE and Iother is
the other cell interference.
As a rule, the higher the traffic load in the neighbour cell,
the more RBs are used there and consequently, the stronger

Assume an LTE network where each user is assigned one

or more RBs for data reception or transmission. The peak
data rates are available only in extremely good channel
conditions. The practical data rate is limited by the amount
of interference and noise in the network. Therefore, we
define the achievable data rate to be the modified Shannon
capacity which depends on the received SINR and the BW
allocated to that user [31].


SNR
R D BW BWutilised log2 1 C
SNR

(17)

where BW accounts for the system BW efficiency of LTE

and SNR accounts for the SNR implementation efficiency
of LTE. The factor is a correction factor which nominally should be equal to one. For Additive White Gaussian
Noise channel conditions, it can be assumed that BW D
0.83, D 0.9 and SNR D 1.0 which are used in our
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DOI: 10.1002/ett

A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

simulation [16]. However, the data rate for a BS i with one

user can be expressed as
Ri D i Nu,i log2 .1 C SINR/


Prx
D i Li NT,i log2 1 C
.1  Lother /
Np

(18)
Q
P

where i D BW 180 kHz and Nu,i is the number of the

utilised RBs by this user, whereas NT,i is the total number of the RBs available to this BS. Note that the data rate
depends on both the own cell load, Li , and the aggregated
load over neighbouring cells Lother . Hence, the achievable
data rate across all utilised RBs by all users within a BS i
can be written as
Ri D i

Nu
X
nD1



Prx,n .1  Lother /
log2 1 C
Np,n

(19)

However, the BSs EE can be defined as the ratio

of the total amount achievable data rate and the total
power consumption.

EEi D

Ri
D
Pci

i

Nu
P

log2 1 C

nD1

Prx,n .1Lother /
Np, n


(20)

i Li Poi C .1  i / Poi

According to the aforementioned definition of load factor,

there are two consequences of increasing the load factor.
The first one is that data rate and EE increase as traffic
load increases because of higher number of RBs utilised.
In contrary, increasing the load factor means increasing the
interference level in the cell and hence resulting in lower
received SINR, which subsequently leads to lower data rate
and EE of the BS as well as for the whole network. Consequently, the EE of HetNet with all three BSs types, namely,
MeNBs, MieNBs and PeNBs can be formulated as [32]
Q
P

EEHet D

RMeNB, q C

qD1
Q
P
qD1

M
P
mD1

Pc MeNB, q C

M
P

P
P

RMieNB, m C

mD1

RPeNB, p

pD1

PcMieNB, m C

P
P

Pc PeNB, p

pD1

(21)
where RMeNB,q , RMieNB,m and RPeNB,p denote the achievable average date rate provided by q-th MeNB, m-th
MieNB and p-th PeNB with their consumed powers of
PcMeNB,q , PcMieNB,m and PcPeNB,p , respectively. In order
to assess the EE of HetNet relative to its size, we use the
notion of area energy efficiency (AEE). AEE is defined as
the overall data rate per total consumed power per unit area
(bit/Joule/unit area) and can be expressed as
AEEHet D

RBs utilised by HetNet users to the total RBs available

to HetNet. The total load of HetNet (LHet / composed of
QMeNB, MMieNB and PPeNB can be expressed in
percentage as follows

EEHet
AHet

(22)

where AHet denotes the total area of the HetNet. However,

the load of HetNet can be also defined as the ratio of the
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

LHet .%/ D

LMeNB,n C

qD1

M
P

LMieNB, m C

mD1

P
P

LPeNB, p

pD1

NCMCP

(23)
where LMeNB,q , LMiNB,m and LPeNB,p are the load factors for
the q-th MeNB, m-th MieNB and p-th PeNB, respectively.
Also N C M C P D NBS is the total BSs in HetNet. In
order to quantify the EE improvement, we define EEstatic
to be the EE of a network with static power consumption
and EEadaptive for a network with adaptive power consumption. Subsequently, EE improvement gain (EEgain / can be
defined as
EEgain D

EEadaptive  EEstatic
 100%
EEadaptive

(24)

However, to evaluate EE, more care must be exercised to

ensure that EE calculations are performed in a fair manner. For example, if the aforementioned HetNets are being
compared, it should be ensured that both networks are serving the same traffic load under the same scenario, in order
to guarantee a fair comparison for EE. The proposed HetNet EE evaluation algorithm is summarised in Table II.

Table II. Algorithm for assessing EE.

Input: Ptx , Ai , Bi , i , BW for each BS
Output: Networks EE Assessment
Non-Load adaptive scenario
For each BS
1.
Set i D 0;
2.
Set the utilised and available RBs
3.
Find the corresponding load factor ;
Li D NNTu
4.
Adapt the utilised BW and average SINR in
term of load factor for each BS using (15)
and (16)
5.
Find achievable data rate, R, using (19)
6.
Find Pc
7.
Find PHet
8.
Calculate the EE and AEE of HetNet within
the entire coverage area using (21) and (22)
9.
end
Load adaptive scenario
10.
Set 0 < i 6 1
11.
Repeat Steps 2 to 8
12.
end
13.
Compare the entire scenarios
14.
Calculate EEgain using (24)
15.
Update i , Li
16.
Return

A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

Table III. Simulation parameters.

3. NUMERICAL RESULTS
AND DISCUSSIONS

The relation between achievable data rate of a HetNet

and its load factor with static power is shown in Figure 3.
It is observed that with static power consumption, the
achievable data rate starts to degrade and the impact of
interference is becoming significant when the traffic load
exceeds 74%. It is worth emphasising that the data rate for
each BS in HetNet is determined by assuming that the own

Value

Carrier frequency
Bandwidth
Channel model
Penetration loss
No. of sectors for
MeNB, MieNB and
PeNB
Thermal noise
Noise figure
Coverage degree
Power consumption
parameters

2.6 GHz
10 MHz
3GPP typical urban [18]
20 dBm [18]
3, 1, 1

174 dBm/Hz
9 dBm (downlink)
95%
MeNB: Ai D 21.45; Bi D 354.44
MieNB: Ai D 7.84; Bi D 71.5
PeNB: Ai D 5.5; Bi D 38 [27]

MeNB, Macro evolved Node-BSs; MieNB, Micro evolved

Node-BS; PeNB, Pico evolved Node-BS.

106

E E (bits/joule)

105
104
103
102
1

10

100

10

20

MeNB w/o interference

MeNB with interference

MieNB w/o interference

MieNB with interference

PeNB w/o interference

PeNB with interference

HetNet w/o interference

HetNet with interference

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Load Factor (%)

Figure 2. EE as a function of load factor with and without the

impact of interference.

HetNet Achievable Data Rate(bits/sec)

Certainly, a straightforward approach for maximising the

EE is to reduce the power consumption of every individual
hardware component involved in the network. However, it
is more important to understand how the software modules can be adapted to the hardware and vice versa in order
to achieve the goal of an integrated network with highly
load adaptive energy efficient operation. In this section, we
present the results of the simulation study to quantify the
benefits of a load adaptive network operation mode in HetNet with one MeNB, one MieNB and one PeNB where
all these BSs have the same load factor. The load adaptive operation can be identified as an effective therapeutic
objective for reducing the network power consumption and
hence improving the overall EE. Based on network traffic
load, the EE improvement potential of adaptive networks
is studied with respect to a reference network with constant
power usage. We first calculate the power consumption for
HetNet with different types of BSs. Each BS may differ
in terms of transmit power, achievable data rate, coverage
and EE. The cell radius for each type of BS is calculated
based on a cell coverage requirement of C D 95% by setting the transmit powers for MeNB, MieNB and PeNB to
46, 35 and 30 dBm, respectively. Our previous work in [20]
has demonstrated the influence of BW on EE. It is shown
that EE increases significantly as the BW increases. In this
paper, however, we choose the most commonly used BW
and carrier frequency which are 10 MHz and 2.6 GHz,
respectively, [26, 33]. The power levels are calculated from
PL models given in [18]. Then, the achieved data rate is
determined by the SINR distribution in the cell.
The IM, which is used to compensate for the impact of
interference coming from other cells, has been associated
with the load factor assigned for HetNet. For the sake of
simplicity, we assume that the load factor in a cell is equal
to the aggregated load factor of neighbour cells. Notably,
other parameters used in the simulation can be found in
Table III.
Energy efficient network operation can be achieved
when most of the RBs available to the BS/network are
utilised by its users as demonstrated in Figure 2. As
expected, the EE increases as BW is utilised efficiently
through the RBs, that is, percentage of the load factor is
increased. In contrary, increasing load factor in neighbouring cells means increasing the interference level in the cell
and hence reducing the received SINR which leads to lower
data rate and EE of the BS as well as for the whole network.

Parameter

4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Figure 3. HetNets achievable data rate versus load factor (fixed

power consumption).

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

104

EE (bits/joule)

cell load factor is equal to the aggregated load factor of

neighbour cells.
However, for both cases (with and without interference),
a higher EE can potentially be achieved when (part of the)
BSs have the ability to scale their power consumption with
respect to the traffic load. Figure 4 shows that adaptive
power consumption attains higher EE as compared with the
conventional network with static power consumption.
It is also shown that HetNet experiences poor EE when
they are operating under a low traffic load conditions. In
order to qualify the adaptation level between the traffic load
and the power consumption, a load adaptive factor () is
introduced here to assess the performance of network from
EE prospective based on the degree of adaptability.
In general, the EE of network increases as the load adaptive factor () increases. However, as shown in Figure 5,
 has less impact on EE performance at high load situation due to the significant impact of interference. Hence,
at low to medium traffic load conditions, the EE increases
dramatically as  increases.
It can be concluded that fixed (high) loaded network can
operate with elements/subsystems with almost static power
consumption (have small values of ) while there is a
slight impact of adoption degree on its EE performance. In
contrast, networks with components/subsystems which can
adaptively scale their power consumption according to the
traffic loads are suited for fluctuating (low) load conditions.
In case of load adaptive operation, the network power
consumption is mostly affected by both the load factor and
, whereas the achievable data rate is affected only by the
load factor. The power consumption of HetNet as a function of its traffic load for different levels of adoption (/ is
demonstrated in Figure 6. It is obvious that when  D 1,
the HetNet is considered fully adaptive and would ideally
consume no power when idle and gradually consume more
power as the traffic load increases while it has fixed power
consumption when  is equal to zero for all BSs in HetNet.
However, both fully adaptive operations described earlier are not attainable in the existing networks and network
elements. The reasonable load adaptive factor should range
between 0 and 1 (0 <  < 1) because there is always a considerable impact of traffic load on the equipments power
consumption.
Overall, such cognition gives a confidence to the usage
of the proposed model in the future studies that focus on
improving the load adaptive factor of already installed network equipments. Also, it should be noted that if it is
possible to obtain perfect energy proportionality of all networking elements ( D 1), sleep modes would not be
necessary. Another metric, namely, AEE metric is also
used to take into consideration the effects of cell size on
EE performance.
As we can see from Figure 7, improving the  will
result in maximising the AEE. For instance, at low traffic load (20%), the maximum value of AEE is increased
from approximately 387 to 652 and 1430 bits/joule/km2 by
improving  from 0 to 50% and 90%, respectively. Moreover, the maximal values of the AEE in these three different

103

102

10

Static power consumption w/o interference

Adaptive power consumption w/o interference
Static power consumption with interference
Adaptive power consumption with interference

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Figure 4. EE HetNet versus traffic load.

Figure 5. EE of HetNet as a function of  and the total load.

8000
7000
6000
5000
4000

Static Power Consumption

3000
2000
1000
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Figure 6. HetNet power consumption versus traffic load for

different .

cases are 841, 1130 and 1555 bits/joule/km2 for medium

traffic load (50%) and 859 to 909 and 953 bits/joule/km2
for high load (90%), which corresponds to the load adap-

A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

10000

1600
1400
8000

1200

800

E E (bits /jo ule )

1000
Static Power Consumption

600

6000

4000

400
200
0

2000

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100
0
0

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Time (hours)

Figure 7. AEE versus traffic load for different .

Figure 8. EE versus daily traffic load profile for different .

Table IV. AEE for different combinations of .
 for MeNB,
MieNB and
PeNB

100

Low Load
(20%)

Medium Load
(50%)

High Load
(90%)

High Load

90

Medium Load
Low Load

80

0,0,0
0,0,0.5
0,0.5,0.5
0.5,0.5,0.5
0,0,1
0,0.5,1
0,1,1
1,1,1

406.01
406.96
409.1
676.68
407.93
410.07
412.24
2030

851.86
853.11
855.9
1135.8
854.37
857.17
859.99
1703.7

837.84
838.09
838.64
881.94
838.34
838.88
839.43
930.94

AEE, area energy efficiency; MeNB, Macro evolved NodeBSs; MieNB, Micro evolved Node-BS; PeNB, Pico evolved
Node-BS.

tation ratios of 0, 0.5 and 0.9, respectively. Figure 7 also

illustrates the significant impact of interference on the AEE
of HetNet as the traffic load increases assuming that the
degree of load adaptation () is the same for all BSs
in HetNet.
Also, it can be shown that the maximum network AEE
(in bits/joule/km2 / with static power consumption (986.4)
is achieved at 74% traffic load.
For  D 0.5, the maximum AEE (1176) is achieved at
63% traffic load, whereas for  D 0.9, the maximum AEE
(1588) is attained at 39% traffic load. This shift in AEE
peaks reflects the fact that the AEE becomes more sensitive
to interference (increasing in traffic load change) at higher
adaptation degree ( ).
However, small BSs such as MieNBs and PeNBs may
have larger values of  than that of MeNBs because
they do not usually have either a big power amplifier or
cooling equipment. Therefore, the AEE for different combination of  for MeNB, MieNB and PeNB for different
loads is shown in Table IV for HetNet with one MeNB,
one MieNB and one PeNB. The arrangement (0, 0, 0)
means that all BSs have static power consumption, whereas
(1, 1, 1) assumes that all BSs are fully load adaptive

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Figure 9. EE improvement gain versus  for different loads.

power consumption while the more realistic scenarios are

the cases between these scenarios in which MieNBs and
PeNBs may have larger values of  than that of MeNBs.
Also, it is clear that AEE increases as  increases and
the higher AEE can be achieved at low load conditions.
In order to realistically assess the EE performance of
HetNet, it is essential to identify the spatial and temporal
variation of the users and their associated traffic demands.
Given the daily traffic load profiles and the distribution of
deployment types, the EE of HetNet over a day can be
evaluated as a function of traffic load variations. Figure 8
demonstrates the EE of a HetNet with one MeNB, one
MieNB and one PeNB for different values of  based on
the 24-h traffic profile provide by Greentouch [21].
As observed in the earlier results, the HetNet experiences poor EE when they are operating under low traffic
load conditions. It can be shown that EE curves degrade
in the early morning hours (38 AM) excluding these
with fully load adaptive operation mode. When the traffic load is the lowest (around 6:30 AM), it can be seen
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

that the EE increased from 1140 (bits/joule) with conventional operation to 8385 (bits/joule) for fully adaptive
operation which is equivalent to more than 86% improvement in network EE performance. This is because the EE
perceived by HetNet is directly related to the average RBs
utilisation of all BSs in HetNet, that is, their traffic loads.
Besides, the power consumption of HetNet increases as 
decreases even it serves the same traffic load. It can also be
observed from Figure 8 that the EE performance becomes
the same for all scenarios at traffic loads higher than
90% as they have the same power consumption and same
RBs utilisation.
Furthermore, it can be observed that high AEE can be
obtained when equipments have high values of  at low
loads compared with high load conditions. Figure 9 highlights the vast potential for EE gains by introducing the
load adaptive operation of BSs at low loads. It shows that
up to 10%, 40% and 80% EE gains can be attained for
high, medium and low traffic loads, respectively, using
the proposed load adaptive models as compared with
conventional system.

4. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a framework for evaluating EE in LTE heterogeneous wireless networks is developed. The load adaptive
network operation can be identified as a new therapeutic
target for reducing the network power consumption and
hence improving the overall EE. The benefits of a load
adaptive network operation in HetNet has been qualified
and presented. Numerical results show that the proposed
load adaptive schemes can significantly improve the network EE. Moreover, it has been observed that highly
loaded network can operate with almost static power consumption, whereas networks with components/subsystems
can adaptively scale their power consumption according to
the traffic loads that are suited for fluctuated (low) load
conditions. Up to 10%, 40% and 80% EE improvement
gains have been attained for high, medium, and low traffic
load conditions, respectively, using the proposed models.
In addition, it is also shown that up to 86% EE improvement can be achieved under full load adaptive network
operation using a realistic daily traffic profile. Overall, the
proposed evaluation model is essential to assess the network EE and can be used in future studies that focus
on improving the adaptation level of the already installed
network equipments. Future works should extend this
framework by taking into consideration the EE of UEs
especially to understand the impacts of the proposed model
on the UEs.

APPENDIX A:

minimum is provided. Precisely, Equation (5) has been

derived to find the lower and upper bounds for the cell
coverage area. The aim is to prove that
ZRg


r
dr
Rg
0




2  2ab
2  2ab
D Q.a/ C exp
Q
b
b2

2
CD 2
Rg

r Q.a C b ln

(A1)

The Q-function can be also written as

!
Z1
x2
exp 
dx
2
a


a
1 1
D  erf p
2 2
2

1
Q.a/ D p
2

(A2)

Now, by using the following substitution, y D a C

b ln Rrg . Therefore, r D 0 ! y D 1 and also, r D


Rg ! y D a. Moreover, we have r D Rg exp ya
and
b


R
dr D bg exp ya
dy
.
Substituting
all
these
elements
in
b
the first line of Equation (A1), the result will result to

Q.a/ D

2
b

Za
exp
1

2.y  a/
b

Q.y/ dy

(A3)

Next, integration by parts can be explained as follows. For

any two differentiable functions u, v
Zx1
u dv D

u vjxx10

Zx1


x0

v du

(A4)

x0

In order to apply the rule (A4) to (A3), it can be assumed

that u D Q.y/ and v D (b/2) exp (2y/b):


2a
C D exp
b

Za


Q.y/ d exp

1

2y
b

9
8


 
 a
Za
=
2a <
2y
2y
dQ.y/
D exp

exp
Q.y/ exp
;
b :
b 1
b
1
9
8


 
  Za
=
2a <
2y
2a

dQ.y/
D exp
exp
Q.a/ exp
;
b :
b
b
1

(A5)
In this appendix, the derivation of the analytical form of
the expected percentage of locations within a cell where
the received power at these locations is above a given
Trans. Emerging Tel. Tech. (2014) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/ett

It is worth reminding that exp .1/ D 0. The next task is

to find the last integral in (A5). For doing so, the next step
is to find the explicit form of dQ(y) as

A. A. Abdulkafi et al.

d
Q.y/ dy
dy



y
d 1 1
dy
 erf p
D
dy 2 2
2
!
y2
1
exp 
Dp
dy
2
2

2 exp.a2 =2/

dQ.y/ D

.1 C a2 / b2

C .2  ab/2 

2

<C
(A13)

(A6)

2 exp.a2 =2/
<
p ,
a.2  ab/ 2

2
>a>0
b

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
where the following identity has been used
1
d
erf .y/ D p exp.y2 /
dy


(A7)

By substituting (A6) into (A5), the following can be

obtained


exp 2a
b
C D Q.a/ C p
2
Proving

1
2

y2

4y
b

Za
1

1
2

y




1 2 4y
y 
dy
exp 
2
b
2
b

2

(A8)


2
b2

. Therefore,




  Za
 
exp 2a
b
2
2
1
exp 2
exp  y 2 dy
C D Q.a/ C p
2
b
b
2
1

(A9)
For the last integral, we substitute D .y  2=b/. This
leads to y D 1 ! D 1 and y D a ! D .2 
ab/=b. Also, dy D d. Invoking all these elements into
(A9), we obtain

 22a
!
Zb
exp 22a
2
b2
C D Q.a/ C
exp 
d
p
2
2

(A10)

For the last integral, by means of definition of Q-function,

it can be simplified as
22a

Zb
1

2
exp 
2

Z1
d D 
22a
b

2
exp 
2


p
2  ab
D  2Q _
b

d
(A11)


By substituting (A11) into (A10), relation (A1) can be

obtained. The Q-function is not an elementary function.
However, the bounds
x
1
1 1
2
2
. p ex =2 < Q.x/ < . p ex =2 , x > 0
2
x
1Cx
2
2
(A12)
become increasingly tight for large x and are often useful. Applying these inequalities for (A1), Equation (8) can
be obtained.

This work was collaboratively carried out by Power Engineering Center, Universiti Tenaga Nasional and MIMOS
Berhad.

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