Abstract:
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The explosive data traffic demands stress the need
for additional capacity in cellular systems, which can be achieved
through the exploitation of Small Cells (SCs). However, the
deployment of SCs implies higher energy consumption in the
network, something that translates into higher financial cost
for the operators. To that end, the existence of a third party
that provides a common SC infrastructure for the operators has
been introduced as an appealing “green” solution, raising though
important issues with regard to the cost sharing for the operators.
In this paper, we effectively address this issue by proposing an
accurate cost model for the SCs and employing different stateof-the-art
techniques to share this cost. In addition, taking into
account the impact of the traffic pattern on this cost, we propose a
novel hybrid cost sharing policy that provides a fair outcome for
the operators. Our results highlight the potential energy efficiency
gains in the network along with different ways of sharing the cost
of the deployed SCs. |