On the Relation between Energy Efficiency and Spectral Efficiency of Multiple-Antenna Systems

Motivated by increased interests in energy efficient communication systems, the relation between energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE) for multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) systems is investigated in this paper. To provide insight into the design of practical MIMO systems, we adopt a realistic power model, as well as consider both independent Rayleigh fading and semicorrelated fading channels. We derive a novel and closed-form upper bound for the system EE as a function of SE. This upper bound exhibits a great accuracy for a wide range of SE values, and thus can be utilized for explicitly assessing the influence of SE on EE, and analytically addressing the EE optimization problems. Using this tight EE upper bound, our analysis unfolds two EE optimization issues: Given the number of transmit and receive antennas, an optimum value of SE is derived such that the overall EE can be maximized; Given a specific value of SE, the optimal number of antennas is derived for maximizing the system EE