  Base station switching (BSS) can results in significant reduction in energy
consumption of cellular networks during low traffic conditions. We show that
the coverage loss due to BSS can be compensated via coordinated multi-point
(CoMP) based transmission in a cluster of base stations. For a BSS with CoMP
based system, we propose various BSS patterns to achieve suitable trade-offs
between energy savings and throughput. We formulate the CoMP resource
allocation and user scheduling as a joint optimization problem. We derive the
optimal time fraction and user scheduling for this problem and use it to
formulate a simplified BSS with CoMP optimization problem. A heuristic that
solves this problem is presented. Through extensive simulations, we show that
suitable trade-offs among energy, coverage, and rate can be achieved by
appropriately selecting the BSS pattern, CoMP cluster, and rate threshold.
