5G base stations use a lot more energy than 4G base stations: MTN
And this is expected to rise with the shift to 5G. A typical 5G base station consumes up to twice or more the power of a 4G base station, writes MTN Consulting Chief Analyst Matt
However, Li says 5G base stations are carrying five times the traffic as when equipped with only 4G, pushing up power consumption. The carrier is seeking subsidies from the Chinese government to help with the increased energy usage.
China Mobile has tried using lower cost deployments of MIMO antennas, specifically 32T32R and sometimes 8T8R rather than 64T64R, according to MTN. However, Li says 5G base stations are carrying five times the traffic as when equipped with only 4G, pushing up power consumption.
Aiming at minimizing the base station (BS) energy consumption under low and medium load scenarios, the 3GPP recently completed a Release 18 study on energy saving techniques for 5G NR BSs . A broad range of techniques was evaluated in terms of the obtained network energy saving (NES) gain and their impact to the user-perceived throughput (UPT).
Edge compute facilities needed to support local processing and new internet of things (IoT) services will also add to overall network power usage. Exact estimates differ by source, but MTN says the industry consensus is that 5G will double to triple energy consumption for mobile operators, once networks scale.
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