IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 20, NO.
1, JANUARY 2016
Energy Optimization in Dense OFDM Networks
Jun Chen, Hongcheng Zhuang, and Zezhou Luo
Abstract—Network densification is a promising technology to
increase 5G system capacity. Energy saving and resource utility
are the key issues for the densified OFDM systems. In contrast
with the conventional energy optimization problem for MIMO–
OFDM system, we use a more realistic model for SINR by consid-
ering the load factor of OFDM systems, which makes the energy
optimization problem very difficult to solve. First, we show that
for single-antenna scenario, this problem can be transformed into
a convex problem, which can be solved more efficiently comparing
with the existing methods. Next, for the more complex multiple-
antenna scenario, we derive a successively convex program method
to obtain the KKT point of this problem. Simulation shows the
effectiveness of the proposed method.
Index Terms—Dense Network, MIMO-OFDM, load factor.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T O ACCOMMODATE growing demand for capacity and
coverage in wireless communication, ultra-dense deploy-
ment is introduced in the 5G networks [1]. Previous studies
indicate that base stations (BS) consume around 80% energy
of the whole network and about 60% of this part is attributed to
the signal processing [2], therefore it is crucial to blue reduce
the power consumption of BS by exploiting suitable signal
processing in the next-generation networks.
For power-saving beamforming of MIMO systems, plenties
of studies investigated the optimal beamforming, e.g. [3]–[6]
and the references therein. In [4], [5], the authors addressed
the joint optimization of transmit power and transmit/receive
beamforming for multiuser MIMO with individual signal-
to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) requirements. Robust
beamforming method based on semidefinite programming was
proposed in [3]. Recently, methods on transmit beamforming
subject to users’s SINR requirements were surveyed in [6]. All
of these considered the SINR models which ignored the effect
of load of OFDM-based systems.
In OFDM-based systems, users are multiplexed in time-
frequency domain in basic units called resource blocks
(RB) [7]. In each cell, users’ data are allocated in quanta of
RBs, so the intra-cell interference is very low and thus can be
neglected. However, due to the inevitable frequency reuse, the
effect of inter-cell interference can seriously degrade the system
performance [7], [8]. Moreover, the load conditions (e.g. RB
utility) in neighboring cells can no longer be independent, espe-
cially for the dense networks. So the traditional SINR models
that neglected this effect need to be improved.
Manuscript received September 2, 2015; accepted November 5, 2015. Date
of publication November 13, 2015; date of current version January 7, 2016.
The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for
publication was M. A. Imran.
The authors are with Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen 518219,
China (e-mail: jensen.chenjun@huawei.com; calf.zhuang@huawei.com;
luozezhou@huawei.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2015.2500584
1558-2558 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
189
Recently, taking into account the effect of the cell load in
inter-cell interference, a more realistic SINR model for OFDM-
based networks was proposed in [9]–[11], which was referred
to as the non-linear load coupling equation. The sum transmis-
sion power minimization satisfying the users’ QoS constraints
was investigated in [10]. However, the optimal transmission
power of each base station could only be obtained through
an implicit function. To address this problem, a technique in
[11] was designed to calculate the downlink transmission power
based on the general theory of standard interference mapping.
However, the convergence performance of their methods are
vulnerable to variations of the load factor and users’ QoS
requirements. Moreover, these methods which are suitable for
the single-antenna regime, can not be readily extended to the
multiple-antenna case.
Based on the aforementioned observations, we try to address
the energy optimization problem for MIMO-OFDM networks
with more realistic interference model. Comparing with the
existing methods, the proposed method is shown to be more
efficient in single-antenna scenario. Moreover, it can be readily
extend to the more general multiple-antenna scenario.
II. E NERGY O PTIMIZATION P ROBLEM
A. System Model
In this letter, we consider a network consisting of M
cells. The sets of cells and users are represented by
M = {1, 2, . . . , M}, N = {1, 2, . . . , N }, respectively. Each BS
is equipped with L i , i ∈ M antennas servicing at least one user.
We use Ni to denote the set of users serviced by the ith BS. Let
√
αi, j hi, j ∈C L i be the channel gain between the jth user and
ith BS, where αi, j and hi, j are the related large scale fading
(including pathloss and shadowing) and fast fading, respec-
tively. The corresponding beamformer is denoted by wi, j . For
notational simplicity, we merge the large scale fading into fast
fading hi, j . Therefore, the received signal of user j in cell i can
be represented by

M
y j = hi,Hj wi, j si, j + H
hk, j wk,l sk,l +v j (1)
k=i,l∈Nk
  
Inter-cell Interference
where v j is the additive noise with zero mean and variance
σ j2 . Assumed si, j is statistically independent, with zero mean
and E{|si, j |2 } = 1, ∀i, j, the SINR of user j in cell i can be
modeled as [11]
 2
 H 
hi, j wi, j 
SINRi, j =  2 (2)

M
 H 
ρk hk, j wk,l  + σ j
2
k=i,l∈Nk
190 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 20, NO. 1, JANUARY 2016

where ρi , i∈M defined later, is the load factor. The correspond- However, this problem is still difficult to solve, because its con-
ing transmission rate f˜i, j of each RB is given by straint is non-convex. To make it more traceable, we firstly
handle the simple scenario, single-antenna case, from which we
f˜i, j = Bln(1 + SINRi, j ) (3)
can get insights that help us to cast problem (7) as convex one.
where B is the bandwidth of each RB. Let the f i, j be the Then we extend the methods to multiple-antenna case.
required transmission rate of user j between BS i, the load 1) Single-Antenna Case: It is worth pointing out that the
factor is defined as [11] similar problem for single-antenna case has been handled in
[10], [11]. However, the solutions presented there are all based

Ni 
Ni
f i, j
ρi = ρi, j = , ∀i ∈ M (4) on the framework of standard interference mapping. Its conver-
j=1
K f˜i, j
j=1 gence performance is slow, see Fig. 6 of [10]. In this paper, we
aim at convex formulation of problem (7). By introducing slack
in which K is the total number of RBs of each cell. Then, the
variables, we obtain
energy optimization problem considering the load factor for
MIMO-OFDM systems can be formulated as 
M 
Ni
min ρ̄i ||wi, j ||2 (8a)

M 
Ni w
i=1 j=1
min ρi ||wi, j ||2
w
i=1 j=1 
Ni
γi, j
−1
s.t. ln(1 + γ̃i, j ) ≤ ρ̄i , ∀i (8b)
s.t. f i, j ≥γi, j , ∀i, j BK
j=1
ρi ≤ρ̄i , ∀i (5)
SINRi, j ≥ γ̃i, j , ∀i, j (8c)
where the first constraint stands for data rate requirement of
user, the second constraint denotes that the load can not excess Let γ̃i, j = eu i, j , for the reasons that will become clear shortly,
the maximum limitation of each BS. Note that, this problem then problem (8) is rewritten as
is different from those studied in [3], [4], [6] where the SINR 
M 
Ni
model did not consider the load effect of each cell. It is also min ρ̄i ||wi, j ||2 (9a)
w
different from the problem in [10], [11] that investigated the i=1 j=1
single-antenna regime. 
Ni
γi, j
−1
s.t. ln(1 + eu i, j ) ≤ ρ̄i , ∀i (9b)
BK
B. The Proposed Method j=1

In this section, we propose a scheme to solve the problem (5). SINRi, j ≥ eu i, j , ∀i, j (9c)
From the definition of load factor (4), we know that it is highly Note that the left and right sides of (9c) are positive. For
correlated with SINR, which leads to the constraints in (5) are single-antenna case, the channel gain vector hi, j , wi, j in (10)
non-convex. Then the well-established convex theory can not be degenerate into scalar variables. By defining ||wi, j ||2 = Pi, j
directly used to solve this problem. However, we can transform and plugging (2) into (9c) yields
it into a convex problem, which can be readily solved. At first, ⎛ ⎞
we will introduce the following proposition, which is a direct M  2  2
 H  2 ⎠ u i, j 
extension of the theorem 1 in [10]: ⎝ ρ̄k hk, j  Pk, j + σ j e / hi, j  Pi, j ≤ 1 (10)
Proposition 1: If the upper bounds of load factors of k=i
 
 H 2  2 c
all BSs are achievable, then the optimal beamformer
wi,∗ j , ∀i, j for problem (5) can be obtained by solving it Next we define Pi, j = eψi, j , eck, j = ρ̄k h k,  , e i, j =
j  / h i, j
with f i, j = γi, j , ρi = ρ̄i .  
σ j2 /h i, j  , the SINR constraint is transformed into
2
From proposition 1, we know that ρi = ρ̄i is the necessary
condition for solving problem (5), thus we can set ρi = ρ̄i in 
M
(2) and get the following equivalent problem eψk, j +ck, j +u i, j −ψi, j + eu i, j −ψi, j +ci, j ≤ 1 (11)

M 
Ni k=i
min ρ̄i ||wi, j ||2 Now, the problem (7) is equivalent to
w
i=1 j=1

M 
Ni
s.t. f i, j = γi, j , ∀i, j min ρ̄i eu i, j (12a)
u
ρi ≤ρ̄i , ∀i (6) i=1 j=1

By plugging (3) into (6), we obtain  Ni

γi, j
−1
s.t. ln(1 + eu i, j ) ≤ ρ̄i , ∀i (12b)

M 
Ni
BK
min ρ̄i ||wi, j ||2 j=1
⎛ ⎞
w
i=1 j=1  M


Ni ln ⎝ eψk, j +ck, j +u i, j −ψi, j + eu i, j −ψi, j +ci, j ⎠ ≤ 0, ∀i, j
γi, j
s.t.
≤ ρ̄i , ∀i. (7) k=i
j=1
B K ln 1 + SINRi, j (12c)
CHEN et al.: ENERGY OPTIMIZATION IN DENSE OFDM NETWORKS 191

TABLE I TABLE II
A LGORITHM FOR E NERGY O PTIMIZATION FOR A LGORITHM FOR E NERGY O PTIMIZATION FOR
S INGLE - ANTENNA S CENARIO M ULTIPLE - ANTENNA S CENARIO

For problem (12), we have the following proposition to show it

is a convex problem.  2
 H 
Proposition 2: The function f (x) = ln(1+e 1
x ) , x ≥ 0 is con- hi, j wi, j  ≥ βi, j γ̃i, j , ∀i, j (14c)
vex, and the problem (12) is a convex problem which can be  2

M
 H 
solved by convex optimization methods. ρ̄k hk, j wk, j  + σ j ≤ βi, j , ∀i, j
2
(14d)
Proof: The second
derivation of
f (x) is k=i
e x (2e x − ln(1 + e x )) / (1 + e x )2 (ln(1 + e x )3 . Since
e x (2e x − ln(1 + e x )) is positive for x ≥ 0, f (x) is con- For problem (14), the only nonconvex constrain is (14c). By
vex function. From [12], we know that the constraints of (12) lemma 3.5 of [13] which uses an upper bounding convex
are all convex and the objective function is also convex. Then function to substitute the right side of (14c), we obtain
it can be solved efficiently by the well-established convex  2 θ
 H  i, j 2 1 2
methods [12].  hi, j wi, j  ≥ β + γ̃ (15)
2 i, j 2θi, j i, j
Note that the constraint (12b) is not a simple convex func-
tion. To make it more mathematical tractable, using the methods γ̃i, j
where θi, j = βi, j . The problem (14) can be written as
in [13], we can transform it into the following simpler convex
problem 
M 
Ni
min ρ̄i ||wi, j ||2 (16a)
w

M 
Ni
i=1 j=1
min ρ̄i eu i, j (13a)
u
i=1 j=1
Ni
γi, j
−1
s.t. ln(1 + γ̃i, j ) ≤ ρ̄i , ∀i (16b)
Ni
γi, j j=1
BK
s.t. G(u i, j , vi, j ) ≤ ρ̄i , ∀i (13b)   
BK    
j=1  1 
(12c)  θi, j /2βi, j , γ̃i, j  ≤ Re hi,Hj wi, j (16c)
(13c)  2θi, j 

where G(u i, j , vi, j ) = f (vi, j ) + f (vi, j )(u i, j − vi, j ) + Im(hi,Hj wi, j ) = 0 (16d)
2 (u i, j − vi, j ) , in which vi, j is fixed. Since G(u i, j , vi, j )
L 2

M  2
 H 
is a quadratic function, problem (13) is simpler than (12). ρ̄k hk, j wk, j  + σ j ≤ βi, j , ∀i, j
2
(16e)
Then, we can solve problem (13) successively to achieve the k=i
KKT point of (12). This method is outlined in Algorithm I.
For Algorithm I, we have the following proposition to show its Since a phase rotation on wi, j will not affect the constraint
solution is optimal. and objective function, we can safely force the imaginary part
Proposition 3: The solution of the Algorithm I is the opti- of hi,Hj wi, j to zero and the constraint (16d) is justified. From
mum of the (12). a given feasible point θ 0 = [θ1,1 , · · · , θ M,Ni ], we can succes-
sively solve the convex problem (16) to get the KKT point of
Proof: From propostion 3.2 of [13], we know that the
problem (14) [13]. The idea of solving energy optimization for
solution of Algorithm I is the KKT point of (12), thus it is a
multiple-antenna case is shown in Algorithm II.
local optimal solution of (12). From Proposition 2, we know
(12) is a convex problem. By (4.2.2) of [12], we know the local
optimum is also the global optimum.  III. S IMULATION
2) Multiple-Antenna Case: In this section, we will handle
The simulation environment is similar to [14]. We use a two-
the problem (8) for multiple antenna case. Similarly, by intro-
tier 3GPP network consisting of one macro BS and 6 micro
ducing slack variables βi, j in the (8c), we can reformulate
BSs. There are 6 users which uniformly distributed in macro
(8) as
cell and each micro BS own one user. We assume all users’

M 
Ni data rate requirements are the same, i.e. γi, j = γ . The large
min ρ̄i ||wi, j ||2 (14a) scale fading (including pathloss and shadowing) and small scale
w
i=1 j=1 fading are generated by using the model in [14] and Rayleigh
Ni

−1 distribution, respectively.
γi, j
s.t. ln(1 + γ̃i, j ) ≤ ρ̄i , ∀i (14b) Fig. 1 shows that the proposed methods, (12) and (13) can
BK attain the same minimum as those in [10], [11]. However,
j=1
192
Fig. 1. Convergence Performance for ρ = 0.3, γ = 200kbps, = 10−4 .
Fig. 2. Average total transmission power Vs users’ required rates when BS
equipped with single antenna.
Fig. 3. Average total transmission power Vs users’ required rates when BS
equipped with 4 antennas.
the proposed method (e.g. (12)) can obtain the optima using
the efficient convex methods directly and can be extend to
multiple-antenna case. According to our simulation, The iter-
ation number of [10], [11] varies greatly with the load factors
ρ and users data rate γ , see also Fig. 5/6 in [10]. Therefore, in
terms of algorithm convergence rate, our methods are fast and
stable, comparing with the existing methods in [10], [11].
Next, we examine the average total transmission power ver-
sus user data rate requirements for single-antenna and multiple-
antenna cases, respectively. From Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, one can
observe that the transmission power in multiple-antenna case
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 20, NO. 1, JANUARY 2016
can be significantly reduced. In our simulation, we find this rate
of power decrease is superlinear. These figures indicate that the
multiple antenna is a suitable energy-saving deployment for the
dense OFDM networks.
As shown in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, the power incremental trend
of single-antenna case is greater when load is lower, e.g. ρ =
0.1/0.3. However, this tread is much smaller for high load
cases. These figures show that the higher the load, the lower
the power consumption, thus a well-designed load balancing
algorithm can increase the power-saving of the MIMO-OFDM
network, which is important for the densified network.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we solve the energy optimization problem
for dense OFDM networks. For single-antenna case, we trans-
form this problem into a convex problem which can be solve
efficiently using the well-established convex methods. For the
more complex multiple-antenna case, the KKT point of this
problem can be obtained by successively solving a convex
problem. Simulation results show that the great transmission
power can be saved using multiple antennas, moreover, a
higher load factor can contribute to power saving for densified
MIMO-OFDM networks.
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