Joint minimization of power and delay in wireless access networks

Overview & Synopsis

In wireless access networks, one of the most recent challenges is reducing the power consumption of the network, while preserving the quality of service perceived by the end users. The present thesis provides solutions to this challenging problem considering two objectives, namely, saving power and minimizing the transmission delay. Since these objectives are conflicting, a tradeoff becomes inevitable. Therefore, we formulate a multi-objective optimization problem with aims of minimizing the network power consumption and transmission delay. Power saving is achieved by adjusting the operation mode of the network Base Stations (BSs) from high transmit power levels to low transmit levels or even sleep mode. Minimizing the transmission delay is achieved by selecting the best user association with the network BSs. We cover two different wireless networks, namely IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks and LTE cellular networks.