Closed-form approximation for the trade-off between energy efficiency and spectral efficiency in the uplink of cellular network

In this paper we propose a tight closed-form approximation of the Energy Efficiency vs. Spectral Efficiency (EE-SE) trade-off for the uplink of a cellular communication system. We model the uplink of the cellular system by considering the Wyner model with Raleigh fading. We first demonstrate the accuracy of our expression by comparing it with Monte-Carlo simulation and the EE-SE trade-off expression based on low-power approximation. Results show the great tightness of our expression with Monte-Carlo simulation. We utilize our closed-form for assessing the EE performance of base station (BS) cooperation against non-cooperative system for both a theoretical power model and a realistic power model. The theoretical power model includes only the transmit power, whereas the realistic power model incorporates the backhaul and signal processing powers in addition of the transmit power. Results indicate that BS cooperation is more energy efficient than non cooperative system and the former always outperforms the latter in terms of EE-SE trade-off. This is however no more the case with the realistic power model: the EE performance is then highly dependent on the number of cooperating BSs.