Abstract
In order to meet the growing mobile data demand, future networks will be equipped with a multitude of access points (APs) and require the development of decentralized and sustainable radio resource management techniques. It is of critical importance to understand how the distribution of network management and signal processing operations affects the energy efficiency. In this paper, we provide a cross-layer framework to study the energy efficiency of wireless networks under different levels of distribution of the network management: (i) hybrid, where the network management operations are shared between nodes and APs, (ii) centralized, where network management is entirely implemented at the APs, and (iii) fully distributed, where all operations are performed by the nodes. We find that in practical scenarios, hybrid network management outperforms a fully distributed approach and exhibits an energy efficiency gain of 40% and above over a centralized approach.