The Role of Inter-Frequency Measurement in Offloading Traffic to Small Cells
Offloading traffic from the macro cells (MCs) with limited frequency resources to the high frequency small cells (SCs) improves the spectral efficiency and the energy efficiency in the inter-frequency heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Inter-frequency measurement (IFM) is an essential process prior to offloading terminals and their traffic to the SCs, and has a great impact on the utilization of the system resources. In this paper, we address the role of IFM in a two-tier HetNet and investigate other system parameters that impact on the offloading process. The uplink energy efficiency (UEE) is derived as a performance metric to minimize the trade-off between the power consumption at the terminals' side and exploiting the system resources. The results show that considering different number of IFM scans per unit time according to the density of SCs can improve the energy efficiency in the system significantly.