A Priority-aware Hybrid Multi-hop Energy Saving Strategy for Inter-eNB Scenario 2

In this paper, we investigate the problem of energy saving (ES) for wireless access networks, especially for the inter-eNB scenario 2 which is a typical non-overlapped scenario specified by 3GPP. Due to the uneven distribution of the traffic load both over time and over cells, energy efficiency can be improved by switching off some eNBs or reducing their transmit powers according to the actual traffic demand. Considering this characteristic of wireless networks, we propose a flexible and efficient solution based on the load information of each cell and the idea of multi-hop load release. The proposed solution is flexible to support different heterogeneous network architecture and different optimization cases with less signaling overhead. Moreover, the gradual multi-hop load release mechanism can efficiently release the load to the whole network and then maximize the total energy efficiency. Simulation results demonstrate that the ES gain of the proposed solution can reach about 25% with appropriate values of different thresholds for event triggering.