Comparison of energy efficiency between macro and micro cells using energy saving schemes.

Abstract

With the rapid development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry the demand for power has also increased. ICT tends to play a significant role in global greenhouse gas emissions. It was responsible for 10% of world’s total energy consumption in 2010 and is doubling in every 10 years [1]. Cellular networks are among the main energy consumers in the ICT field.
To have an environment friendly transit into the new era of internet of things, we need to focus on energy consumption by these networks. There are various approaches for densifying the present network that we have; we will compare the approaches to cater to the traffic demands with macro cells versus micro cells deployments.
In the project, we had set up a dense urban real like scenario and compared energy efficiencies between macro cells centric deployment versus a micro cells centric deployment, we made use of energy saving schemes like micro TX, lean carrier and MBSFN to reduce the power consumed in the network.
With results presented in this thesis, we will contribute to the understanding of how these cells behave in a realistic traffic scenario and how much energy saving can we achieve by implementing the above-mentioned schemes. To keep the results more generic and not specific to any particular set of radio base stations, we implemented EARTH power model to calculate power consumption. The energy saving schemes proved out to save a lot of energy in the operations of both macro and micro cells. The amount of savings from these energy saving schemes depend upon the utilization and sleep time of these nodes, The energy saving schemes saved up to 17% of energy in macros and 33% of energy in micros. Comparing macro without energy saving scheme to micro with lean carrier energy saving scheme results in 55% of energy savings. So, from an energy saving point of view, it would be much better to implement a heterogeneous network with more micro cells with energy saving features than just macro cells.

Popular Abstract

What if I told you that your usage of mobile phone networks is directly connected to the homeless polar bears. Yes, ICT industry in total is responsible for as much carbon emissions as aviation industry. And, cellular networks are among the main energy consumers in the ICT industry. Last year in Germany alone mobile network operators spent more than 200 million Euros on electricity bills and 80% of that cost was from cellular networks. And, as per the EU regulations the cost of electricity is likely to increase more in coming years.
In the new era of internet of things and connected cars these cellular networks are likely to densify furthermore so, there is a pressing need to focus on energy consumption by these networks. There are various approaches for densifying the present networks; in this project we have made a comparison between macro cells centric deployment versus micro cells centric deployment with respect to their energy consumption. Macro cells are big base stations which consumes a lot of energy from 100W to 450W, but they do provide a larger coverage up to tens of kilometers whereas, micro cells consume lesser energy; up to 150W, but provide limited coverage of a few hundred meters.
We had set up a real like dense urban city scenario with buildings, streets, pavements etc. in our simulator and compared energy efficiencies between these two approaches. We made use of energy saving schemes like micro TX sleep, lean carrier and MBSFN to reduce the power consumed in the network. These schemes basically shut down the cell when there is no traffic load on the base station thereby, saving the energy.
With results presented in this thesis, we will contribute to the understanding of how these cells behave in a realistic traffic scenario and how much energy saving can we achieve by implementing the above-mentioned schemes. To keep the results more generic and not specific to any particular set of radio base stations, we implemented the EARTH power model to calculate power consumption. The EARTH power model gives the generic equations for calculating power consumption in different types of cells.
The energy saving schemes proved out to save a lot of energy in the operations of both macro and micro cells. The amount of savings depends upon the utilization and sleep time of these cells. Using the energy saving schemes in macro cells deployment can give savings as much as 17% and in micro cells deployment it was around 33%. A micro cell with lean carrier energy saving scheme was 55% more energy efficient than a macro cell without energy saving scheme. So, from an energy consumption point of view, it would be much better to densify a heterogeneous network with more micro cells with energy saving features than just macro cells.

• author: Sharma, Koustubh
• supervisor: Zhi Zhang; Maria Kihl
• organization: Department of Electrical and Information Technology
• course: EITM02 20171
• year: 2017
• type: H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
• subject: Technology and Engineering
• keywords: Hetnets, Energy Efficiency, EARTH Power Model, Macro cells, Micro cells, LTE, 5G, Heterogeneous Networks, Energy Saving Schemes.
• report number: LU/LTH-EIT 2018-624
• language: English
• id: 8929515
• date added to LUP: 2018-03-23 15:37:00
• date last changed: 2018-03-23 15:37:00