Recently, cellular networks’ energy efficiency has garnered research interest from academia
and industry because of its considerable economic and ecological effects in the near future. This study
proposes an approach to cooperation between the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) and next-generation
wireless networks. The fifth-generation (5G) wireless network aims to negotiate a trade-off between
wireless network performance (sustaining the demand for high speed packet rates during busy traffic
periods) and energy efficiency (EE) by alternating 5G base stations’ (BSs) switching off/on based
on the traffic instantaneous load condition and, at the same time, guaranteeing network coverage
for mobile subscribers by the remaining active LTE BSs. The particle swarm optimization (PSO)
algorithm was used to determine the optimum criteria of the active LTE BSs (transmission power,
total antenna gain, spectrum/channel bandwidth, and signal-to-interference-noise ratio) that achieves
maximum coverage for the entire area during the switch-off session of 5G BSs. Simulation results
indicate that the energy savings can reach 3.52 kW per day, with a maximum data rate of up to
22.4 Gbps at peak traffic hours and 80.64 Mbps during a 5G BS switched-off session along with
guaranteed full coverage over the entire region by the remaining active LTE BSs