Energy Efficiency vs. Economic Cost of Cellular Networks under Co-channel Interference

In this paper we analyze the efficiency of cellular network designs, by taking into account the co-channel interference among cells, different amounts of available bandwidths, and frequency reuse. A realistic power consumption model is considered for the energy efficiency analysis, and for the economic analysis it is employed a model in which the total cost is composed by three factors: spectrum license, energy and infrastructure costs. Our results show that different conclusions can be obtained according to the focus of the network design: energy efficiency or total costs. Assuming an economic point of view, the most cost efficient solutions can be obtained when the number of base stations and the available bandwidth are the factors to be balanced, as the infrastructure cost and the spectrum license costs correspond to the most relevant fraction of the total costs. However, considering the energy efficiency anlysis, it can be more beneficial to employ a higher system bandwidth and balance the number of base stations and the reuse of frequencies in order to minimize the required transmit power.