Green distributed antenna systems for smart communities: A comprehensive survey

Smart communities are an emerging communication means in which humans and smart devices will interact with each other and deliver ubiquitous services by exploiting social intelligence. Distributed antenna system (DAS), one of the key technologies to realize smart decisions in smart communities, can settle network smart coverage problem and improve system energy/spectrum efficiency significantly. Considering that energy consumption is an important element for community communications, in this paper, we survey the existing green DAS research for smart communities. In particular, our investigation covers antenna distribution, system capacity, spectrum efficiency, energy efficiency, and green access issues. Moreover, we analyze the existing application opportunities and challenges. This survey contributes to better understanding of the challenges and approaches for green DAS in existing smart community networks and further shed novel light on some future research directions.