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.

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 a base station power consumption model?

In recent years, many models for base station power con-sumption have been proposed in the literature. The work in proposed a widely used power consumption model, which explicitly shows the linear relationship between the power transmitted by the BS and its consumed power.

Why is a base station important in radio access network architecture?

The base station is the primary source of energy consumption in radio access network architecture , and hence the reduction of energy consumption of the base stations can improve the overall energy efficiency of the radio access network that has received much attention (e.g., , , ).

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%) .

Do radio access networks increase energy consumption?

The emerging technologies of radio access networks (RAN), e.g., millimeter-wave (mm-wave) communication and large-scale antennas, make a considerable contribution to such an increase in energy consumption.