How will a 5G base station affect energy costs?

According to the mobile telephone network (MTN), which is a multinational mobile telecommunications company, report (Walker, 2020), the dense layer of small cell and more antennas requirements will cause energy costs to grow because of up to twice or more power consumption of a 5G base station than the power of a 4G base station.

How to evaluate a 5G energy-optimised network?

To properly examine an energy-optimised network, it is very crucial to select the most suitable EE metric for 5G networks. EE is the ratio of transmitted bits for every joule of energy expended. Therefore, while measuring it, different perspectives need to be considered such as from the network or user’s point of view.

How can network densification improve the capacity of 5G networks?

Network densification, one of the key technologies in 5G, can significantly improve the network capacity through the installation of additional cellular small cell base stations (SCBSs) forming small cell networks (SCNs) using the spectrum reuse policy to meet the increasing demand (Samarakoon et al., 2016a).

How will 5G impact the environment?

The advent of the ultra-dense 5G network and a vast number of connected devices will bring about the obvious issues of significantly increased system energy consumption, operational expenses, and carbon dioxide emissions.

Is 5G the future of mobile communication?

Currently, mobile communication is now entering into the era of fifth-generation (5G) mobile networks (Alsharif et al., 2019). It is expected that 5G networks are capable of providing 1000 fold network capacity and connecting trillions of devices.

Can 5G reduce energy consumption?

However, the energy consumption of 5G networks is today a concern. In recent years, the design of new methods for decreasing the RAN power consumption has attracted interest from both the research community and standardization bodies, and many energy savings solutions have been proposed.