Traffic-Aware Energy-Efficient Adaptive Cell Sectorization for Future Wireless Networks

Mobile data traffic has been increasing over the past few years due to the rise of both smart phones and tablets. To meet these traffic demands, the wireless infrastructure is expanding resulting in higher energy consumption and consequently higher operational costs. In this paper, an algorithm is proposed to minimize the energy consumption in future wireless networks. The algorithm utilizes adaptive cell sectorization, which is very efficient in cases of non-uniform distribution of the users within the cell. Specifically, the angular angle of a sector is changing dynamically according to the number of users in its coverage area, such that the sector will be switched off if it has no users to save energy. The simulation results show that the algorithm proposed is capable of saving the power up to 76% per sector.