HAPS as a Hypercell: Enabling Coverage and Capacity Carrier Shutdown in Cellular Networks
Energy consumption remains a dominant operational challenge for current and future cellular systems, especially in dense urban deployments. This paper investigates a novel role for non terrestrial network (NTN) high-altitude platform station (HAPS) as an enabler of energy-efficient operation rather than only coverage extension. We define the HAPS-Hypercell as a wide-area non-terrestrial layer that can assume the coverage role of multiple terrestrial macro-cells, enabling, for the first time, the shutdown of both capacity and coverage macro-cells. We develop a comprehensive third generation partnership project (3GPP)-compliant system model, along with two HAPS-Hypercell pairing architectures that capture the interplay among multiple layers, realistic channel conditions, and distributed carrier shutdown (CS) mechanisms. Our results show that the HAPS-Hypercell can effectively reduce overall network power consumption. We then identify key limitations of a straightforward HAPS integration, laying the groundwork for future optimization and providing key insights for next-generation CS operations.