Energy savings scheme in radio access networks via compressive sensing-based traffic load prediction

In radio access networks, the base stations’ (BSs) power consumption does not merely depend on the traffic loads within its coverage. The auxiliary devices, especially the cooling system in BSs, contribute to significant energy exhaustion. As the traffic loads fluctuate spatially and temporally, the BSs consequently suffer from heavy energy wastage when the traffic loads of their coverage are low. In this paper, an energy saving scheme over predicted traffic loads is proposed to tackle this energy inefficiency problem in incumbent radio access networks induced by the fluctuations of traffic loads. The proposed scheme firstly takes advantage of the spatial–temporal pattern of traffic loads and employs the compressive sensing method to predict the future traffic loads. Then, a grid-based energy saving scheme is developed to improve the energy efficiency through turning some BSs into sleeping mode while ensuring the quality of experience. Results of the simulation with real traffic load statistics finally validate the accuracy of the traffic load prediction and large improvement of energy efficiency. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. *Correspondence Z. Zhao, Department of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. E-mail: [email protected] Received 30 March 2012; Revised 1 August 2012; Accepted 23 August 2012