Cellular Mobile Network Densification Utilizing Micro Base Stations

Energy efficiency in information and communications technology, and in cellular mobile radio networks in particular, is gaining in importance not only with regard to the ecological assessment. Reducing the power consumption of mobile radio systems has recently attracted attention of network operators as energy costs make up a vast portion of today's operational expenditure. In this regard, it is often talked of deploying small, low power base stations to significantly increase energy efficiency of cellular radio networks. In this paper we study the efficiency of deployment layouts featuring micro base stations in comparison with conventional pure macro systems by means of area power consumption and system throughput. We further introduce the notion of measuring energy efficiency by evaluating the ratio of achievable system throughput to power spent in the network.