Monitoring and optimization of energy consumption of base transceiver stations

TL;DR

This paper presents a monitoring study of energy consumption at six base transceiver stations in Italy, analyzing how traffic and environmental factors influence energy use and exploring potential savings through simulation.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the relationship between traffic, environmental conditions, and energy consumption at BSs, and demonstrates potential energy savings via Monte Carlo simulation.

Findings

Energy consumption correlates with telephone traffic and environmental parameters.

Monitoring data enables identification of energy-saving opportunities.

Simulations suggest significant energy savings are achievable.

Abstract

The growth and development of the mobile phone network has led to an increased demand for energy by the telecommunications sector, with a noticeable impact on the environment. Monitoring of energy consumption is a great tool for understanding how to better manage this consumption and find the best strategy to adopt in order to maximize reduction of unnecessary usage of electricity. This paper reports on a monitoring campaign performed on six Base Transceiver Stations (BSs) located central Italy, with different technology, typology and technical characteristics. The study focuses on monitoring energy consumption and environmental parameters (temperature, noise, and global radiation), linking energy consumption with the load of telephone traffic and with the air conditioning functions used to cool the transmission equipment. Moreover, using experimental data collected, it is shown, with a Monte Carlo simulation based on power saving features, how the BS monitored could save energy.