With the increasing amounts of terminal equipment with higher requirements of communication quality in the emerging fifth generation mobile communication network (5G), the energy consumption of 5G base stations (BSs) is increasing significantly, which not only raises the operating expenses of telecom operators but also imposes a burden on the environment. To solve this problem, a two-step energy management method that coordinates 5G macro BSs for 5G networks with user clustering is proposed. The coordination among the communication equipment and the standard equipment in 5G macro BSs is developed to reduce both the energy consumption and the electricity costs. A novel user clustering method is proposed together with Benders decomposition to accelerate the solving process. Simulation results show that the proposed method is computationally efficient and can ensure near-optimal performance, effectively reducing the energy consumption and electricity costs compared with the conventional dispatching scheme.
Keywords: 5G macro base station; BS sleeping; Benders decomposition; energy management; user clustering.