Energy Efficiency of Multi-Carrier Massive MIMO Networks: Massive MIMO Meets Carrier Aggregation

David López-Pérez, Antonio De Domenico, Nicola Piovesan, Xinli Geng, Harvey Bao, Mérouane Debbah

Abstract: The energy consumption of cellular networks, despite the high energy efficiency of the fifth generation (5G) of mobile technology, is still a challenge. The fundamental problem arises due to the complexity of optimising the operation of the available rich set of energy efficiency features in large-scale deployments. To assist such optimisation, a large body of research -with the resulting understanding and algorithms-exists, particularly on the energy efficiency of single-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output systems. However, other funda-mental cellular features, such as those relating to multi-carrier systems, remain largely unexplored. In this paper, we show how multi-carrier features, such as carrier aggregation, can play a significant role in energy savings, and question the need for hundreds of antennas and transceiver chains at the base stations as an urgent solution to increase the energy efficiency of next generation networks.