Radio Resource Management for Improving Energy Self-sufficiency of Green Mobile Networks

Abstract

Three factors make power supply one of the most urgent and challenging issues for the future of mobile networks. First, the expected fast growth of mobile traffic raises doubts about the sustainability of mobile communications, that already account for 0.5% of the woldwide energy consumption. Second, power supply has become far the largest component of the operational costs of running a network. Third, the deployment of network infrastructures in emerging countries is strategic, but, in these countries, the power grid is not always reliable. Renewable energy sources can help to cope with these issues. However, one of their main drawbacks is the intermittent and difficult to predict energy generation profile. The feasibility of renewable power supply for base station (BS) powering depends then by the possibility to reduce the BS consumption and to adapt it to the amount of available energy. In this paper, we consider a cluster of BSs powered with photovoltaic (PV) panels and equipped with energy storage units. Resource on Demand (RoD) strategies are implemented to reduce the cluster energy consumption and to adapt it to energy availability. The results show that resource of demand can effectively be applied to make off-grid BS deployment feasible.