One of the main challenges for the future of information and communication technologies is the reduction of the power consumption in telecommunication networks. The key consumers are the home gateways at the customer premises for fixed line access technologies and the base stations for wireless access technologies. However, with increasing bit rates, the share of the core networks could become significant as well. In this paper we characterize the power consumption in the different types of networks and discuss strategies to reduce the power consumption.
In this paper, a power consumption model for both macrocell and microcell base stations is proposed. This model is validated by temporal power measurements on actual base stations and an excellent agreement is obtained. Furthermore, the power consumption's evolution during the day is investigated by means of these measurements. The energy efficiency of three different wireless technologies is compared namely mobile WiMAX, LTE, and HSPA. Based on the model proposed, the deployment tool GRAND (Green Radio Access Network Design) is implemented which allows to design an energyefficient access network for a predefined area. In general and based on the assumptions made, a macrocell base station consumes about 4.4 times more than a microcell base station. However, a microcell base station is less energy-efficient than a macrocell base station due to its lower coverage range. Despite this, it is still useful to introduce them in the network as the same coverage can be obtained with a lower total power consumption than with a network where only macrocell base stations are used.
The power consumption of wireless access networks will become an important issue in the coming years. In this paper, the power consumption of base stations for mobile WiMAX, fixed WiMAX, UMTS, HSPA, and LTE is modelled and related to the coverage. A new metric, the power consumption per covered area P C area , is introduced, to compare the energy efficiency of the considered technologies for a range of bit rates. Assuming the model parameters are correct, the conclusions are then as follows. For a 5 MHz channel, UMTS is the most energy-efficient technology until a bit rate of 2.8 Mbps, LTE between 2.8 Mbps and 8.2 Mbps, fixed WiMAX between 8.2 Mbps and 13.8 Mbps and finally mobile WiMAX for bit rates higher than 13.8 Mbps. Furthermore, the influence of MIMO is investigated. For a 2x2 MIMO system, P C area decreases by 36 % for mobile WiMAX and by 23 % for HSPA and LTE compared to the SISO system, resulting in a higher energy efficiency. The power consumption model for base stations is used in the deployment tool GRAND (Green Radio Access Network Design) for green wireless access networks. GRAND uses a genetic based algorithm and is applied on an actual case for the Brussels Capital Region, showing the possibilities of energy-efficient planning.
As both the bit rate required by applications on mobile devices and the number of those mobile devices are steadily growing, wireless access networks need to be expanded. As wireless networks also consume a lot of energy, it is important to develop energy‐efficient wireless access networks in the near future. In this study, a capacity‐based deployment tool for the design of energy‐efficient wireless access networks is proposed. Capacity‐based means that the network responds to the instantaneous bit rate requirements of the users active in the selected area. To the best of our knowledge, such a deployment tool for energy‐efficient wireless access networks has never been presented before. This deployment tool is applied to a realistic case in Ghent, Belgium, to investigate three main functionalities incorporated in LTE‐Advanced: carrier aggregation, heterogeneous deployments, and Multiple‐Input Multiple‐Output (MIMO). The results show that it is recommended to introduce femtocell base stations, supporting both MIMO and carrier aggregation, into the network (heterogeneous deployment) to reduce the network's power consumption. For the selected area and the assumptions made, this results in a power consumption reduction up to 70%. Introducing femtocell base stations without MIMO and carrier aggregation can already result in a significant power consumption reduction of 38%.
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