Dimming cellular networks

We propose a novel technique called dimming to improve the energy efficiency of cellular networks by reducing the capacity, services, and energy consumption of cells without turning off the cells. We define three basic methods to dim the network: coverage, frequency, and service dimming. We construct a multi-time period optimization problem to implement frequency dimming and extend it to implement both frequency and service dimming together. We illustrate the ability of dimming techniques to adapt the capacity and network services in proportion to the dynamic spatial and temporal load resulting in significant energy savings through numerical results for a sample network. ©2010 IEEE

Distributed drone base station positioning for emergency cellular networks using reinforcement learning

Due to the unpredictability of natural disasters, whenever a catastrophe happens, it is vital that not only emergency rescue teams are prepared, but also that there is a functional communication network infrastructure. Hence, in order to prevent additional losses of human lives, it is crucial that network operators are able to deploy an emergency infrastructure as fast as possible. In this sense, the deployment of an intelligent, mobile, and adaptable network, through the usage of drones—unmanned aerial vehicles—is being considered as one possible alternative for emergency situations. In this paper, an intelligent solution based on reinforcement learning is proposed in order to find the best position of multiple drone small cells (DSCs) in an emergency scenario. The proposed solution’s main goal is to maximize the amount of users covered by the system, while drones are limited by both backhaul and radio access network constraints. Results show that the proposed Q-learning solution largely outperforms all other approaches with respect to all metrics considered. Hence, intelligent DSCs are considered a good alternative in order to enable the rapid and efficient deployment of an emergency communication network