Quantitative analysis of energy conservation, economic benefits, and environmental safety of base transceiver station co‐location: Osogbo, Osun state, Nigeria as case study

Abstract

The ever‐increasing demand for mobile services puts mobile operators under pressure to invest heavily in infrastructure to expand coverage and capacity so as to serve customers. A smart way to ensuring effective signal transmission at optimized unit cost per infrastructure is the co‐location scheme. However, effective signal transmission requires an integrated network of base transceiver station (BTS) to provide adequate radio coverage to mobile stations. However, telecommunication operators share infrastructure by mounting base station antennas on selective common sites, a scheme called sites co‐location. This paper quantitatively examined the economic advantage of the BTS co‐location scheme over the standalone system in terms of energy conservation, environmental preservation, and cost per BTS reduction via facility optimization. A survey study, measurement, and evaluation were conducted around the study area to measure and evaluate the benefits of BTS co‐location over the standalone system in terms of energy conservation, environmental safety, and economic benefits. Results revealed that about 50% of power was conserved through co‐location; the average emission per BTS in the co‐located scheme is far below than is obtainable in the standalone system, and the average cost per BTS is significantly optimized as unnecessary duplication of some site facilities is eliminated. It is thus concluded that co‐location scheme conserves energy, saves costs, and serves as a means of avoiding unnecessary duplication of infrastructure and proliferation of BTS. This work, therefore, recommends implementation of BTS co‐location anywhere it is feasible.