Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Mao, Wei, Wei, Lili, Semiari, Omid, Yeh, Shu-ping, Nikopour, Hosein
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21385
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866908470584803328
author Mao, Wei
Wei, Lili
Semiari, Omid
Yeh, Shu-ping
Nikopour, Hosein
author_facet Mao, Wei
Wei, Lili
Semiari, Omid
Yeh, Shu-ping
Nikopour, Hosein
contents 3GPP Release 18 cell discontinuous transmission and reception (cell DTX/DRX) is an important new network energy saving feature for 5G. As a time-domain technique, it periodically aggregates the user data transmissions in a given duration of time when the traffic load is not heavy, so that the remaining time can be kept silent and advanced sleep modes (ASM) can be enabled to shut down more radio components and save more energy for the cell. However, inevitably the packet delay is increased, as during the silent period no transmission is allowed. In this paper we study how to configure cell DTX/DRX to optimally balance energy saving and packet delay, so that for delay-sensitive traffic maximum energy saving can be achieved while the degradation of quality of service (QoS) is minimized. As the optimal configuration can be different for different network and traffic conditions, the problem is complex and we resort to deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework to train an AI agent to solve it. Through careful design of 1) the learning algorithm, which implements a deep Q-network (DQN) on a contextual bandit (CB) model, and 2) the reward function, which utilizes a smooth approximation of a theoretically optimal but discontinuous reward function, we are able to train an AI agent that always tries to select the best possible Cell DTX/DRX configuration under any network and traffic conditions. Simulation results show that compared to the case when cell DTX/DRX is not used, our agent can achieve up to ~45% energy saving depending on the traffic load scenario, while always maintaining no more than ~1% QoS degradation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_21385
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep Reinforcement Learning-based Cell DTX/DRX Configuration for Network Energy Saving
Mao, Wei
Wei, Lili
Semiari, Omid
Yeh, Shu-ping
Nikopour, Hosein
Networking and Internet Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
3GPP Release 18 cell discontinuous transmission and reception (cell DTX/DRX) is an important new network energy saving feature for 5G. As a time-domain technique, it periodically aggregates the user data transmissions in a given duration of time when the traffic load is not heavy, so that the remaining time can be kept silent and advanced sleep modes (ASM) can be enabled to shut down more radio components and save more energy for the cell. However, inevitably the packet delay is increased, as during the silent period no transmission is allowed. In this paper we study how to configure cell DTX/DRX to optimally balance energy saving and packet delay, so that for delay-sensitive traffic maximum energy saving can be achieved while the degradation of quality of service (QoS) is minimized. As the optimal configuration can be different for different network and traffic conditions, the problem is complex and we resort to deep reinforcement learning (DRL) framework to train an AI agent to solve it. Through careful design of 1) the learning algorithm, which implements a deep Q-network (DQN) on a contextual bandit (CB) model, and 2) the reward function, which utilizes a smooth approximation of a theoretically optimal but discontinuous reward function, we are able to train an AI agent that always tries to select the best possible Cell DTX/DRX configuration under any network and traffic conditions. Simulation results show that compared to the case when cell DTX/DRX is not used, our agent can achieve up to ~45% energy saving depending on the traffic load scenario, while always maintaining no more than ~1% QoS degradation.
title Deep Reinforcement Learning-based Cell DTX/DRX Configuration for Network Energy Saving
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21385