Integrated load-based power saving for real-time and nonreal-time traffic in LTE-TDD

Long‐Term Evolution (LTE) is a 4G wireless broadband technology developed by the Third Generation Partnership Project. Two duplex modes, namely, frequency division duplex and time division duplex (TDD), are defined in LTE for transmission in both downlink and uplink directions simultaneously. Power saving mechanisms for LTE‐frequency division duplex were proposed in the authors' previous work. Applicability of the previously proposed mechanisms to LTE‐TDD is investigated in this paper, and the idea of “virtual time” associated with the mapping mechanism from the virtual time domain to the actual time domain for different TDD configurations is proposed. With the help of the mapping mechanism, 3 revised power saving schemes are proposed to support real‐time user equipments and nonreal‐time user equipments in LTE‐TDD. Simulation study demonstrates the effectiveness of the mapping mechanism as well as the benefit of the proposed schemes in power saving efficiency and real‐time support in comparing with the standard‐based mechanism.