Abstract-Energy efficiency in cellular networks is a growing concern for cellular operators to not only maintain profitability, but also to reduce the overall environment effects. This emerging trend of achieving energy efficiency in cellular networks is motivating the standardization authorities and network operators to continuously explore future technologies in order to bring improvements in the entire network infrastructure. In this article, we present a brief survey of methods to improve the power efficiency of cellular networks, explore some research issues and challenges and suggest some techniques to enable an energy efficient or "green" cellular network. Since base stations consume a maximum portion of the total energy used in a cellular system, we will first provide a comprehensive survey on techniques to obtain energy savings in base stations. Next, we discuss how heterogenous network deployment based on micro, pico and femtocells can be used to achieve this goal. Since cognitive radio and cooperative relaying are undisputed future technologies in this regard, we propose a research vision to make these technologies more energy efficient. Lastly, we explore some broader perspectives in realizing a "green" cellular network technology.

This paper addresses the cell association problem in the downlink of a multi-tier heterogeneous network (HetNet), where base stations (BSs) have finite number of resource blocks (RBs) available to distribute among their associated users. Two problems are defined and treated in this paper: sum utility of long term rate maximization with long term rate quality of service (QoS) constraints and global outage probability minimization with outage QoS constraints. The first problem is well-suited for slow fading environments, while the second problem provides a framework to deal with environments with fast fading. The defined optimization problems in this paper are solved in two phases: cell association phase followed by the optional RB distribution phase. We show that the cell association phase of both problems have the same structure. Based on this similarity, we propose a unified distributed algorithm with low levels of message passing for the cell association phase. This distributed algorithm is derived by relaxing the association constraints and using Lagrange dual decomposition method. In the RB distribution phase, the remaining RBs after the cell association phase are distributed among the users. Simulation results show that our distributed cell association scheme outperforms schemes that are based on maximum signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR).

This paper investigates a decode-and-forward twohop relaying system consisting of one source, one relay and one destination, in which orthogonal frequency division multiplexing is used. The relay forwards the message received from the source on a subset of available subcarriers in the second time slot. Firstly, a subcarrier pairing and selection algorithm is proposed, assuming that perfect channel state information (CSI) is available at all nodes, then, power is allocated to both the source and relay stations under individual power constraints in order to maximize the capacity. Secondly, subcarrier selection and pairing, and power allocation (PA) under partial CSI assumption along with individual power constraints are addressed. The result is a novel distributed algorithm with low complexity maximizing the expected value of capacity at the source and relay nodes. Finally, the simulation results show that selective relaying combined with subcarrier pairing and PA improves the system capacity to a considerable extent in both perfect and partial CSI cases.

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This paper investigates a Decode-and-Forward (DF) two-hop relaying system in which Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is used. The relay forwards the message received from the source on a subset of available subchannels in the second time slot. Firstly, a pairing and selecting algorithm is proposed. Then, power will be allocated to the both base station and relay station under individual power constraints in order to maximize the capacity. The pairing and selecting algorithm and resource allocation is based on instantaneous channel state information (ICSI). Finally, the simulation results show that selective relaying combined with subcarrier pairing and power allocation will improve the system capacity to a considerable extent.