Optimal Resource Allocation for Data Offloading in Energy-Harvesting Small-Cell Networks

Offloading data traffic from the conventional macro- cell base stations to densely deployed small-cell base stations (SBSs) has been emerging as a promising technique to support the explosion of data traffic with reduced energy consumption and improved quality of service provision. In this paper, we study the joint spectrum allocation and power allocation problem for the data offloading in energy-harvesting downlink small-cell networks. First, we formulate the resource allocation problem under the revenue maximization criterion, which is expressed as the difference between the total utility across users and the total power payment. By proving the convexity of the problem, we can compute the solution efficiently. Numerical results show that the energy-efficiency can be improved while alleviating the burden of macro-cell base station through using the resource allocation scheme proposed for data offloading.