Dario Sabella

How much energy is needed to run a wireless network

In order to quantify the energy efficiency of a wireless network, the power consumption of the entire system needs to be captured. In this article, the necessary extensions with respect to existing performance evaluation frameworks are discussed. The most important addenda of the proposed energy efficiency evaluation framework (E3F) are a sophisticated power model for various base station types, as well as large-scale long-term traffic models. The BS power model maps the RF output power radiated at the antenna elements to the total supply power of a BS site. The proposed traffic model emulates the spatial distribution of the traffic demands over large geographical regions, including urban and rural areas, as well as temporal variations between peak and off-peak hours. Finally, the E3F is applied to quantify the energy efficiency of the downlink of a 3GPP LTE radio access network.

Cloud technologies for flexible 5G radio access networks

The evolution toward 5G mobile networks will be characterized by an increasing number of wireless devices, increasing device and service complexity, and the requirement to access mobile services ubiquitously. Two key enablers will allow the realization of the vision of 5G: very dense deployments and centralized processing. This article discusses the challenges and requirements in the design of 5G mobile networks based on these two key enablers. It discusses how cloud technologies and flexible functionality assignment in radio access networks enable network densification and centralized operation of the radio access network over heterogeneous backhaul networks. The article describes the fundamental concepts, shows how to evolve the 3GPP LTE architecture, and outlines the expected benefits.

Cellular Energy Efficiency Evaluation Framework

In order to quantify the energy savings in wireless networks, the power consumption of the entire system needs to be captured and an appropriate energy efficiency evaluation framework must be defined. In this paper, the necessary enhancements over existing performance evaluation frameworks are discussed, such that the energy efficiency of the entire network comprising component, node and network level contributions can be quantified. The most important addendums over existing frameworks include a sophisticated power model for various base station (BS) types, which maps the RF output power radiated at the antenna elements to the total supply power of a BS site. We also consider an approach to quantify the energy efficiency of large geographical areas by using the existing small scale deployment models along with long term traffic models. Finally, the proposed evaluation framework is applied to quantify the energy efficiency of the downlink of a 3GPP LTE radio access network.

5GrEEn: Towards Green 5G mobile networks

In 2020, mobile access networks will experience significant challenges as compared to the situation of today. Traffic volumes are expected to increase 1000 times, and the number of connected devices will be 10-100 times higher than today in a networked society with unconstrained access to information and sharing of data available anywhere and anytime to anyone and anything. One of the big challenges is to provide this 1000-fold capacity increase to billions of devices in an affordable and sustainable way. Low energy consumption is the key to achieve this. This paper takes as starting point the situation of today, and tries to pinpoint important focus areas and potential solutions when designing an energy efficient 5G mobile network architecture. These include system architecture, where a logical separation of data and control planes is seen as a promising solution; network deployment, where (heterogeneous) ultra dense layouts will have a positive effect; radio transmission, where the introduction of massive antenna configurations is identified as an important enabler; and, finally, backhauling solutions that need to be more energy efficient than today.

On Multi-Access Edge Computing: A Survey of the Emerging 5G Network Edge Cloud Architecture and Orchestration

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is an emerging ecosystem, which aims at converging telecommunication and IT services, providing a cloud computing platform at the edge of the radio access network. MEC offers storage and computational resources at the edge, reducing latency for mobile end users and utilizing more efficiently the mobile backhaul and core networks. This paper introduces a survey on MEC and focuses on the fundamental key enabling technologies. It elaborates MEC orchestration considering both individual services and a network of MEC platforms supporting mobility, bringing light into the different orchestration deployment options. In addition, this paper analyzes the MEC reference architecture and main deployment scenarios, which offer multi-tenancy support for application developers, content providers, and third parties. Finally, this paper overviews the current standardization activities and elaborates further on open research challenges.

Energy Efficiency Benefits of RAN-as-a-Service Concept for a Cloud-Based 5G Mobile Network Infrastructure

This paper focuses on energy efficiency aspects and related benefits of radio-access-network-as-a-service (RANaaS) implementation (using commodity hardware) as architectural evolution of LTE-advanced networks toward 5G infrastructure. RANaaS is a novel concept introduced recently, which enables the partial centralization of RAN functionalities depending on the actual needs as well as on network characteristics. In the view of future definition of 5G systems, this cloud-based design is an important solution in terms of efficient usage of network resources. The aim of this paper is to give a vision of the advantages of the RANaaS, to present its benefits in terms of energy efficiency and to propose a consistent system-level power model as a reference for assessing innovative functionalities toward 5G systems. The incremental benefits through the years are also discussed in perspective, by considering technological evolution of IT platforms and the increasing matching between their capabilities and the need for progressive virtualization of RAN functionalities. The description is complemented by an exemplary evaluation in terms of energy efficiency, analyzing the achievable gains associated with the RANaaS paradigm.

Mobile-Edge Computing Architecture: The role of MEC in the Internet of Things.

In this article, we provided a tutorial on MEC technology and an overview of the MEC framework and architecture recently defined by the ETSI MEC ISG standardization group. We described some examples of MEC deployment, with special reference to IoT uses since the IoT is recognized as a main driver for 5G. After having also discussed benefits and challenges for MEC toward 5G, we can say that MEC has definitely a window of opportunity to contribute to the creation of a common layer of integration for the IoT world. One of the main questions still open is: How will this technology coexist with LTE advanced pro and the future 5G network? For this aspect, we foresee the need for very strong cooperation between 3GPP and ETSI (e.g., NFV and possibly other SDOs) to avoid unnecessary duplication in the standard. In this sense, MEC could pave the way and be natively integrated in the network of tomorrow.

Energy Efficiency in LTE-Advanced Networks with Relay Nodes

this document analyses the energy efficiency of two relaying schemes that represent a possible way to deploy a relay enhanced network: the two hop scheme and the multicast cooperative scheme. Results exist in literature that provide a model for the theoretical evaluation of the capacity improvement that these solutions can yield, however no analysis is available at present on the energy efficiency of these schemes. This work enhances the existing theoretical models for capacity evaluations, providing a first analysis from an energy efficiency point of view of these two approaches, considering a fully loaded network and the total emitted RF power of the transmitting nodes. Results are provided in terms of the Energy Consumption Index (ECI) of these schemes, a metric proposed in the EARTH project for the assessment of the energy consumption of network solutions. The ECI distribution is obtained and compared with the case of a network deployed without relay nodes, showing that besides the possible improvements in capacity, relays are also candidates as a valuable tool to reduce the energy consumption of a telecommunication network.

An E 3 F based assessment of energy efficiency of relay nodes in LTE-advanced networks

this document analyses the energy efficiency of two possible schemes that have been discussed as a possible way to deploy a relay enhanced network. In the first part the main results obtained in a previous work [1] are summarized, showing the energy efficiency of a relay enhanced network obtained considering small scale simulations, in a full load scenario and measuring only the radiated power. These results provided a first indication of the potentiality of relay nodes as a tool to reduce energy consumption. In the second part a deeper analysis is provided, showing how the energy efficiency of the network can be obtained also considering the whole power consumed by all the components of the transmitting nodes, and considering scenarios where the network is not fully loaded. This kind of result has been used as input to the E3F framework proposed by the EARTH project, that allows to take into account long-term traffic variations and the mix of deployments that are typical of a modern telecommunication network, providing in that way a global assessment of energy efficiency in relay enhanced network.

Resource allocation for network-controlled device-to-device communications in LTE-Advanced

Network-controlled device-to-device (D2D) communication allows cellular users to communicate directly, i.e., without passing through the eNodeB, while the latter retains control over resource allocation. This allows the same time–frequency resources to be allocated to spatially separated D2D flows simultaneously, thus increasing the cell throughput. This paper presents a framework for: (1) selecting which communications should use the D2D mode, and when, and (2) allocating resources to D2D and non-D2D users, exploiting reuse for the former. We show that the two problems, although apparently similar, should be kept separate and solved at different timescales in order to avoid problems, such as excessive packet loss. We model both as optimization problems, and propose a heuristic solution to the second, which must be solved at millisecond timescales. Simulation results show that our framework is practically viable, it avoids the problem of packet losses, increases throughput and reduces delays.