Towards Energy- and Cost-Efficient 6G Networks

TL;DR

This paper explores energy-saving strategies for 6G networks, focusing on the role of network-controlled repeaters (NCRs) in enhancing energy and spectral efficiency while reducing costs.

Contribution

It introduces optimal energy efficiency schemes for 6G networks utilizing NCRs, demonstrating their potential to improve energy and spectral efficiency.

Findings

NCRs enable power savings at gNBs.

NCRs increase overall energy efficiency.

NCRs provide a cost-effective solution for 6G performance.

Abstract

As the world enters the journey toward the 6th generation (6G) of wireless technology, the promises of ultra-high data rates, unprecedented low latency, and a massive surge in connected devices require crucial exploration of network energy saving (NES) solutions to minimize the carbon footprint and overall energy usage of future cellular networks. On the other hand, network-controlled repeaters (NCRs) have been introduced by 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) as a cost-effective solution to improve network coverage. However, their impact on network power consumption and energy efficiency has not been thoroughly investigated. This paper studies NES schemes for next-generation 6G networks aided by NCRs and proposes optimal NES strategies aiming at maximizing the overall energy efficiency of the network. Repeaters are shown to allow for power savings at next-generation nodeB (gNB), and offer higher overall energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE), thus providing an energy-efficient and cost-efficient alternative to increase the performance of future 6G networks