Towards a deployment tool for wireless access networks with minimal power consumption

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, HSPA, and LTE is modelled. This power consumption is related to the coverage of the base station. The considered technologies are compared according to their energy efficiency for different bit rates at a bandwidth of 5 MHz. For this particular case and based on the assumptions of parameters of the specifications, HSPA is the least energy-efficient technology. Until a bit rate of 11 Mbps LTE is the most energy-efficient while for higher bit rates mobile WiMAX performs the best. Furthermore the influence of MIMO is investigated. A decrease of about 80% for mobile WiMAX and about 74% for HSPA and LTE for the power consumption per covered area is found for a 4*4 MIMO system compared to a SISO system. The introduction of MIMO has thus a positive influence on the energy efficiency of the considered technologies. The power consumption and coverage model for base stations is then used to develop a prediction tool for power consumption in wireless access networks

Evaluation of the potential for energy saving in macrocell and femtocell networks using a heuristic introducing sleep modes in base stations

In mobile technologies two trends are competing. On the one hand, the mobile access network requires optimisation in energy consumption. On the other hand, data volumes and required bit rates are rapidly increasing. The latter trend requires the deployment of more dense mobile access networks as the higher bit rates are available at shorter distance from the base station. In order to improve the energy efficiency, the introduction of sleep modes is required. We derive a heuristic which allows establishing a baseline of active base station fractions in order to be able to evaluate mobile access network designs. We demonstrate that sleep modes can lead to significant improvements in energy efficiency and act as an enabler for femtocell deployments

Reducing the power consumption in wireless access networks: overview and recommendations

Due to growing importance of wireless access and the steeply growing data volumes being transported, the power consumption of wireless access networks will become an important issue in the coming years. This paper presents a model for this power consumption and investigates three base station types: macrocell, microcell, and femtocell base stations. Based on these models, the coverage effectiveness of the three base station types is compared and the influence of some power reducing techniques such as sleep modes and MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) is evaluated

Power consumption in wireless access networks

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 and UMTS is modelled. This power consumption is evaluated in relation to the coverage. For a physical bit rate of 2 Mbps, a power consumption of approximately 5600 W and a range of 1 km is obtained with UMTS. Fixed WiMAX covers 70 % and mobile WiMAX only 40 % of this range. However, fixed and mobile WiMAX consume roughly 50 % less than UMTS. In a suburban area and for a physical bitrate of 2 Mbps, fixed WiMAX base stations consume approximately 6 W per user, mobile WiMAX base stations 17 W per user, and UMTS base stations 5 W per user. The power consumption of these wireless access networks is compared with other access network technologies and research challenges concerning these access networks are presented

Model for power consumption of wireless access networks

The power consumption of wireless access networks will become an important issue in the coming years. In this study, the power consumption of base stations for mobile WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access), fixed WiMAX, UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access) and LTE (Long-Term Evolution) is modelled and related to the coverage. A new metric, the power consumption per covered area PC(area), is introduced, to compare the energy efficiency of the considered technologies for a basic reference configuration and a future extended configuration, which makes use of novel Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) technology. The introduction of MIMO has a positive influence on the energy efficiency: for example, for a 4 x 4 MIMO system, PC(area) decreases with 63% for mobile WiMAX and with 50% for HSPA and LTE, compared to a Single Input Single Ouptut (SISO) system. However, a higher MIMO array size (i.e. a higher number of transmitting and receiving antennas) does not always result in a higher energy efficiency gain

Reducing the power consumption in LTE-advanced wireless access networks by a capacity based deployment tool

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%