Energy Efficient and High Capacity Tradeoff in Distributed Antenna System for a Green Cellular Network

Abstract

Two main concerns for designing a wireless system are more network capacity and less energy consumption. Recently, distributed antenna system (DAS) has received considerable attention due to its potential to provide higher spectral efficiency (SE) and uniform coverage for cellular networks. In this regard, this paper compares the performance of DAS with centralized antenna system (CAS) in LTE-A system in terms of energy efficiency (EE), where practical restrictions such as out-of-cell interference, path loss, and small scale fading are taken into account. Furthermore, the EE and system power consumption are investigated under three different cell-load scenarios (high, moderate, and low load) where different numbers of antennas are activated and remaining of antennas are under sleep mode. Finally, based on the tradeoff between power-saving and EE, two optimal DAS antenna deployments are proposed for low and moderate cell-load scenarios. The results reveal that DAS considerably outperforms CAS in terms of EE and by optimal deploying antennas of DAS significant power-saving and EE are achievable. The proposed methodology achieved savings of up to 27.63% in terms of energy savings in a macrocell with guarantee of a high capacity of data.