Cell wilting and blossoming for energy efficiency

Abstract

In this article, we consider the adoption of sleep modes for the base stations of a cellular access network, focusing on the design of base station sleep and wake-up transients. We discuss the main issues arising with this approach, and we focus on the design of base station sleep and wake-up transients, also known as cell wilting and blossoming. The performance of the proposed procedures is evaluated in a realistic test scenario, and the results show that sleep and wake-up transients are short, lasting at most 30 seconds.