Green communications by demand shaping and user-in-the-loop tariff-based control

Abstract

Abstract-The new field of green communications can be divided into a) energy-efficient communications equipment or b) using information and communication technology to improve the world to become more energy aware. Mobile data traffic and utility energy consumption have a lot in common. There is a limited supply due to limited resources, and only growth (of quantities, technology) can increase this, at the cost of a higher carbon footprint. The green index is defined here for cellular wireless.On the other hand there is a demand which is user-generated, variable over time and space, and ever increasing at a fast pace. Flat rates or almost flat utility tariffs have spoiled users and established high user expectations. Instead of engineering for the growth of supply, this paper investigates how to engineer for controlling the demand side. Dealing with congestion is a consequence of the supply=demand regime and the end of overprovisioning. New tariffs are required that are tailored to the major QoS classes and help to shape demand at the user and application level. This paper investigates QoS-aware demand shaping and control by user-in-the-loop and tariff-based control.

Economics of user-in-the-loop demand control with differentiated QoS in cellular networks

“…The user behavior cannot be precisely known, but only the aggregate behavior of all users in a cell is required and a recent survey [11] provides some working assumptions for the classes S, V, D, which improves upon the early UIL work [6] assuming a linear elastic model. In this paper the user response is assumed following these equations, displayed in Figure 3.…”

“…The user receives hints and incentives or penalties (quantified user information, QUI) in order to convince him to deviate from the default behavior (which is uncontrolled, open loop). The outcome is the user moving from one location to a better one [5] or postponing session traffic out of the busy hours [6].…”

“…The controller determines a dynamic price rate [6] per class -valid for all users and all new sessions -and updates this information to the user terminal (UT). The handling on the UT is up to the operating system.…”

“…Thus there is a temporal system response function. model [6]. In this paper, a pricing proportional to the usage volume v is assumed using π as the dynamic price=tariff rate.…”

“…In this paper, the solution approach is user-in-the-loop (UIL). Previous work [5], [6] has shown that influencing the user behavior is a promising approach with substantial gains in spectral efficiency and successful congestion mitigation. Dynamic usage-based tariffs are controlled in a closed loop including the user.…”