A Tractable Approach to Base Station Sleep Mode Power Consumption and Deactivation Latency

We consider an idealistic scenario where the vacation (no-load) period of a typical base station (BS) is known in advance such that its vacation time can be matched with a sleep depth. The latter is the sum of the deactivation latency, actual sleep period and reactivation latency. Noting that the power consumed during the actual sleep period is a function of the deactivation latency, we derive an accurate closed-form expression for the optimal deactivation latency for deterministic BS vacation time. Further, using this expression, we derive the optimal average power consumption for the case where the vacation time follows a known distribution. Numerical results show that significant power consumption savings can be achieved in the sleep mode by selecting the optimal deactivation latency for each vacation period. Furthermore, our results also show that deactivating the BS hardware is sub-optimal for BS vacation less than a particular threshold value.