A base station on-off model for coverage, throughput and economy analysis under HetNet

Small cell networks as an important evolution path for the next generation cellular networks, have drawn much attention. Different from traditional base stations (BSs) always-on model, we proposed a BSs on-off model where a new simple expression of the BS active probability of HetNet is derived. This model is more suitable for the practical network where BSs are not always-on. Based on this, we develop an analytical framework for downlink performance evaluation of small cell networks, adopting stochastic geometry theory. The system coverage probability (CP) is derived, which is analytical tractable and is useful for small cell networks. This new result is then applied to evaluate the 2-tier HetNet average rate (AR) and average energy efficiency (AEE). It is analytically shown that increasing the small cells density is beneficial to the system overall throughput, but not affect the system overall AEE obviously. While the range expansion is helpful to the overall AEE, but it will cause some loss in system throughput.