How do base stations affect mobile cellular network power consumption?

Base stations represent the main contributor to the energy consumption of a mobile cellular network. Since traffic load in mobile networks significantly varies during a working or weekend day, it is important to quantify the influence of these variations on the base station power consumption.

Do base stations dominate the energy consumption of the radio access network?

Furthermore, the base stations dominate the energy consumption of the radio access network. Therefore, it is reasonable to focus on the power consumption of the base stations first, while other aspects such as virtualization of compute in the 5G core or the energy consumption of user equipment should be considered at a later stage.

Is there a direct relationship between base station traffic load and power consumption?

The real data in terms of the power consumption and traffic load have been obtained from continuous measurements performed on a fully operated base station site. Measurements show the existence of a direct relationship between base station traffic load and power consumption.

What is the power consumption of baseband processing?

The power consumption of the baseband processing is defined as a constant value in the Auer, Holtkamp, and Piovesan models. In the Holtkamp model, it is scaled linearly with the bandwidth and the number of employed antennas.

What is the largest energy consumer in a base station?

The largest energy consumer in the BS is the power amplifier, which has a share of around 65% of the total energy consumption . Of the other base station elements, significant energy consumers are: air conditioning (17.5%), digital signal processing (10%) and AC/DC conversion elements (7.5%) .

How can a power consumption model be used to estimate power consumption?

Quantification models are most suitable for quantifying overall power consumption of base station or even networks as part of large-scale evaluations. The number and complexity of parameters is limited, and simple usage with load profiles or traffic models is possible to estimate total energy consumption.