5G Energy Saving And Consumption Reduction—R18

Facing the high-profile network energy consumption challenge, what energy-saving innovations have been introduced in the upcoming latest evolution version of 5G, R18?

R18 energy-saving innovation mainly includes two aspects: network energy consumption model and network energy-saving technology. The network energy consumption model establishes a unified standard for the industry to evaluate innovative energy-saving technologies, which is conducive to the industry chain's efforts to accelerate the development of green networks. Network energy-saving technology includes a number of innovative technologies across the air domain, time domain, frequency domain and power domain, which can more flexibly and dynamically match business characteristics and achieve a more refined energy-saving mechanism.

Defining Network Energy Consumption Model For The First Time

Who are the big energy consumers on the network? Widely distributed base stations. According to statistics, the energy consumption of the radio access network (RAN) accounts for 70% to 85% of the total energy consumption of mobile networks. Undoubtedly, reducing RAN network energy consumption is the key for operators to achieve energy conservation and cost reduction.

In view of this, 3GPP has paid more attention to RAN network energy consumption since R18 and launched a network energy-saving research project, aiming to maximize RAN network energy efficiency by defining network energy consumption models and evaluation methods and researching energy-saving technologies.

The network energy consumption model mainly defines a reference wireless configuration set and five power consumption states, and defines the relative power consumption and transition time of the five power consumption states under the reference wireless configuration. The reference wireless configuration includes parameters such as frequency range, number of transmit antennas, and transmit power that are closely related to base station power consumption. The five power consumption states are Active UL, Active DL, Micro sleep, Light sleep and Deep sleep. Transition duration refers to the time required to enter and exit different sleep states. Generally, the deeper the sleep level, the more components are turned off, which also means the longer the time required to shut down and activate. Therefore, the transition time of micro-sleep is on the microsecond level, while shallow sleep and deep sleep require several milliseconds. and tens of milliseconds.

3GPP R18 NW Energy Consumption Model

The birth of the network energy consumption model is of great significance to the development of network energy conservation and emission reduction. First, the industry chain has unified standards. Different manufacturers can research and evaluate network energy-saving technologies under unified standards, which will help promote industry technology exchanges and cooperation and accelerate the development of networks in a green and low-carbon direction. Secondly, this model is designed for the present and the future, taking into account future software and hardware development trends. It can be used as a "ruler" for network energy-saving technology evaluation in the next five years or even longer, and has very important guiding significance for the industry to continuously improve network energy efficiency in the long term. Furthermore, more power consumption states mean more network energy-saving methods and finer sleep granularity, which is conducive to dynamic response to network business changes with refined energy-saving mechanisms, maximizing network energy efficiency while ensuring business experience.

As an important participant in the R18 network energy saving project, Ericsson has made important contributions in defining network energy consumption models, especially the Cat 1 model. This model is based on optimized software, hardware and architecture, as well as future achievable technologies, so that the five power consumption states can define lower relative power consumption and transition time. Taking deep sleep as an example, the conversion time required for traditional deep sleep is usually within 5 minutes, but it is only 50ms under the Cat 1 model. The conversion time is shortened by 6000 times, which means that it can provide more energy-saving opportunities during busy hours, which is good for the future. Improving the energy efficiency of the entire network has immeasurable potential.

Meticulous And Accurate Energy-saving Technology

In terms of energy consumption per bit, with the introduction of new technologies such as Massive MIMO, 5G NR is more energy-efficient than previous generations of mobile communication technologies. Some operator studies have pointed out that the energy efficiency of 5G networks is 20 to 30 times that of 4G. So why is the energy consumption of 5G networks still high today?

An important reason is that network energy consumption cannot dynamically and accurately match business changes, resulting in serious energy waste problems. For example, the capacity of a cell is designed according to the business demand during peak hours, but the business volume of the cell changes with time. Usually there are very few periods of high business load within 24 hours a day, and most of the time it is in a medium to low load state. At night, it is even in a zero-load state, which causes the network to generate a large amount of ineffective power consumption most of the time. As 5G networks and services continue to develop, more and more sites will be used, and more antennas, larger bandwidths, and more frequency bands will be used, and this "waste" phenomenon will be further intensified.

In this regard, R18 studies a variety of energy-saving technologies in the air domain, time domain, frequency domain and power domain, aiming to dynamically respond to business changes by finely and timely adjusting wireless and hardware resources, and ensure that network performance is not affected.

3GPP R18 NW Energy Saving Techniques

For example, in terms of airspace, there are a large number of space components in 5G AAU equipment, including 64 or more radio frequency channels. Each channel has power-consuming devices such as PA and LNA. If all these devices are always activated, it will cause A lot of unnecessary ineffective power consumption. R18 introduces dynamic antenna adaptation technology, which can dynamically shut down related devices according to cell service changes.

Different from the traditional extensive channel shut-off technology, R18 dynamic antenna adaptation is not only more flexible and finer in shutting down the device, but also introduces a major innovation, which can make decisions based on the channel status information fed back by the terminal. More optimized shutdown decisions can minimize AAU energy consumption without affecting network performance.

In the time domain, R18 introduces Cell DTX/DRX (cell discontinuous transmission and discontinuous reception) technology, which can save power consumption by periodically turning off the transmission and reception of data services. Cell DTX/DRX is synchronized with DTX/DRX on the terminal side. The network will inform the terminal of the cell shutdown cycle. When the cell turns off sending and receiving, the terminal also stops sending and receiving at the same time, which is more conducive to terminal energy saving.

Ericsson Shows Off Its Unique Skills

In order to help operators break the energy consumption curve, Ericsson has been committed to researching network energy-saving technologies and continues to introduce more energy-saving products and solutions. Among them, Ericsson has released an energy-saving function called Booster Carrier Sleep, which has attracted widespread attention in the industry.

Booster Carrier Sleep is an energy-saving technology based on multi-layer networks that can dynamically activate and shut down carriers according to business needs. For example, when the base station load is low, energy saving can be achieved by turning off cells/carriers in the capacity layer and retaining the coverage layer.

According to Ericsson experts, Booster Carrier Sleep has two major highlights: "automation" and "all-weather". Automation, that is, automatic dormancy and activation of cells/carriers according to business needs. All-weather, the energy-saving time is extended from the traditional 0:00 to 6:00 to 0:00 to 24:00, which allows the cell/carrier to be dormant for more time and further reduces network energy consumption. At the same time, this technology can switch users to other carriers/cells or standards before the cell goes dormant, ensuring that network performance and user experience are not affected.

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