Improving energy efficiency of femtocell base stations via user activity detection

Femtocells, which operate in licensed spectrum and provide improved cellular coverage inside homes and offices, have attracted significant interest in the wireless industry. As a result, an extensive deployment of femtocells is expected in the near future. One prime concern with a large-scale femtocell deployment is the resultant substantial energy consumption. In this paper, we address this issue by proposing a novel energy saving procedure which allows the femtocell base station (BS) to completely switch off its radio transmissions and associated processing when not involved in an active call. The results indicate that based on a certain voice traffic model, the proposed procedure introduces an average reduction of approximately 37.5% in the femtocell's power consumption. Moreover, for a high femtocell traffic scenario, a fivefold reduction in the occurrence of mobility events can also be achieved, compared to a fixed pilot transmit power strategy.