Energy efficiency analysis of downlink CoMP in heterogeneous network considering fronthaul power consumption

Abstract

Coordinated multi-point (CoMP) in heterogeneous network (HetNet) has been a promising solution to meet the unprecedented growth of data traffic. In this paper, we revisit the conventional energy efficiency (EE) for the downlink of HetNet CoMP by considering the fronthaul power consumption. To this end, we propose a new power consumption model for the practical use, in which two types of fronthaul transmission schemes are investigated, namely "joint transmission (JT)" and "coordinated beamforming (CB)". Especially, JT CoMP scheme is divided into two methods, "After-precoding (AP)" and "Before-precoding (BP)", according to the way to transfer precoding matrix and data through the fronthaul link. We propose the power model for each method by focusing on the fronthaul power consumption. Based on the EE formulation via the proposed power consumption model, we compare and analyze the EE of the HetNet CoMP and Non-CoMP through simulations. Finally, we present the impact of the fronthaul power on the EE in HetNet CoMP system.