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addition, they can sometimes be deployed in areas where the regional cost of distributed diesel, the solar and wind
there is no grid power available [5] and operation is conditions and the load requirements of the site. For that
limited by the available power from RES or batteries. reason a combination of diesel generators with RES
Furthermore, the connectivity with mobile users and energy supply and battery banks is proved as the optimum
terminals operating under batteries necessitates an solution (Fig. 4) [8]. In parallel, power adaptation and
efficient communication between the base stations and the management techniques are required to increase the
terminals in terms of data delivery and power efficiency of base station operation. As an example,
consumption. The dominating energy consumption part of intelligent power management can monitor the traffic and
a mobile network is the base station providing wireless power consumption of different components of the base
transmission of data (Figs. 2, 4). The green operation of station, identify idle components and can decrease carriers
cellular networks mainly depends on base station and time slots (channels) to provide energy efficiency.
infrastructure/design and the efficiency of the electronic Power management and power reuse solutions are
equipments, optimized network planning, efficient investigated in [4], [21], [22], [23]. Furthermore, the
transmission techniques and physical layer characteristics deployment of CDMA 3G systems that utilize power
(access schemes, modulation, coding, etc) and the control and soft handoff resulted in a more efficient
penetration of RES into the network (Fig. 6). utilization of the available resources. Power management
For cellular networks, intelligent and efficient in wireless cellular networks is also achieved by adaptive
network planning is of utmost importance. The channel allocation. During low traffic demands, channel
deployment of a cellular system under strict and efficient management reduces the amount of energy transmitted by
plans can dramatically reduce the required number of base the base station [21], [22], [24], [25].
stations to cover a given area. This can be achieved when As far as the base station operation is concerned,
a sophisticated radio propagation algorithm, a detailed most of the energy is wasted for cooling purposes due to
GIS map coupled with an optimization technique is used electronic equipment inefficiencies. It is shown that the
[16]. In the literature it is shown that site minimization is incorporation of advanced power amplifiers can minimize
important to reduce the CAPEX of the system but energy power demands. As an example, the adoption of DPD
efficiency is achieved when the network is deployed with (Digital Pre-Distortion) coupled with Doherty technology
dense low power stations, optimally placed over the GIS improves the power amplifier efficiency to over 30% from
map and taking into account CO2 emissions for site visits about 9% without DPD and Doherty. In addition, envelope
and base station operation due to grid electricity [8], [13], tracking for more efficient amplification of the signal
[16]. In addition, dense low power base stations enable the proved to reduce power consumption by these equipments
penetration of RES into the network. The optimization in in a critical manner [26], [27]. Furthermore, multicarrier
terms of RF planning incorporates accurate propagation technology may provide power efficiency by decreasing
models and sophisticated optimization techniques. the required power per user. Distributed base stations
The physical layer of wireless communications systems may share the baseband units by different radio
(modulation, coding, channel access schemes, etc) is more remote units or tower mounted antennas minimizing
power demanding compared to a fixed access due to cooling equipment and transmission losses through cables.
serious signal impairments of mobile radio channels. The Intelligent site location can also result in a decrease of the
communication between the serving station and the mobile power consumption since the location and the number of
user requires overheads in data transfer that increases the the required BTS is highly correlated with the energy
ratio of required Watt/Gbps. In [17] the impact of the consumption of the network [8].
physical layer on energy consumption of wireless Thermal removal and cooling of electronic
networks is investigated. A similar study is shown in [18] equipments are power demanding processes that degrade
where different access techniques are examined for High the performance of the system. One option is to investigate
Altitude Platforms (HAPs) systems. HAPs suffer crucial different thermal removal techniques like fresh air flow
power limitations since they are autonomous operating by within the base station and another approach is to increase
solar energy. In both papers it is found that the the electronic equipment’s tolerance to higher
characteristics of the physical layer are an important factor temperatures. A study proved that by increasing the
for energy consumption of the network and they depend tolerance of a power amplifier from 21°C to 25°C a
on the traffic load and the environment of each scenario reduction of the overall base station of 10% can be
that needs to be considered in the deployment of the achieved [28].
system. Adaptive modulation and coding techniques are At the core network part, power efficiency can be
important. A cross layer optimization technique that yields obtained by advanced communication protocols. A review
energy efficiency is also presented in [19]. of energy efficient communication protocols is presented
The access network of cellular systems requires a in [29]. In future communication networks, protocols
dense deployment of sites and base stations to provide a should be designed in order to establish a reliable
reliable communication link between the user and the connection but at the same time be power efficient. In
network. Renewable energy supply (like solar and wind) is addition a high sharing ratio of servers is required for a
considered as the first option for energy efficiency of the smaller consumption. Finally, a mobile IPv6 scheme
sites. The problem is that the deployment of RES depends
provides a power saving option for cellular and WLAN
on local meteorological conditions which are not always
systems [30].
ideal for every location [5, 20]. The main viability factors
for green power deployments of mobile network sites are
Koutitas and Demestichas: A Review of Energy Efficiency in Telecommunication Networks 7