Modeling energy consumption in cellular networks

TL;DR

This paper presents an analytical model for energy consumption in cellular networks, dividing it into broadcast and additive parts, and evaluates their mean and variance under Poisson-distributed mobiles, with applications to optimizing cell radius and battery sizing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel energy consumption model with closed-form expressions for mean and variance, considering mobility and power control effects.

Findings

Broadcast and additive energy parts are of similar magnitude.

Power control significantly reduces energy consumption.

Mobility impacts energy usage and can be optimized for efficiency.

Abstract

In this paper we present a new analysis of energy consumption in cellular networks. We focus on the distribution of energy consumed by a base station for one isolated cell. We first define the energy consumption model in which the consumed energy is divided into two parts: The additive part and the broadcast part. The broadcast part is the part of energy which is oblivious of the number of mobile stations but depends on the farthest terminal, for instance, the energy effort necessary to maintain the beacon signal. The additive part is due to the communication power which depends on both the positions, mobility and activity of all the users. We evaluate by closed form expressions the mean and variance of the consumed energy. Our analytic evaluation is based on the hypothesis that mobiles are distributed according to a Poisson point process. We show that the two parts of energy are of the same order of magnitude and that substantial gain can be obtained by power control. We then consider the impact of mobility on the energy consumption. We apply our model to two case studies: The first one is to optimize the cell radius from the energetic point of view, the second one is to dimension the battery of a base station in sites that do not have access to permanent power supply.