Base station sleeping (BSS) can result 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 α-Fair 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. © 2013 IEEE.