By Shailesh Awasthy, Sr. Director, Technology Sales, Networks Business, Samsung Electronics America
Governments and businesses are focused on sustainability as concern over global warming’s impact is prompting the world to find ways to use less energy and lower greenhouse gas emissions. The telecommunications industry is keenly aware of its sustainability needs and energy is top of mind for mobile operators when building out 5G networks.
With global mobile data traffic rising at a compound annual growth rate of 28%—expected to reach 267 million terabytes per month in 2027—the industry must concentrate on conserving power whenever and wherever possible. According to the International Telecommunication Union, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) industry contributes roughly 2% of global carbon emissions, with a large percentage used by the Radio Access Network (RAN).
The growing demand in traffic and the growing number of 5G cell sites make it crucial for companies across the industry to work together and take the steps needed to improve network energy efficiency.
New methods facilitate significant power savings in 5G networks
The industry has been working together to prepare for the anticipated uptick in energy consumption with the rapid growth in 5G deployments. For example, the 3GPP specification for 5G is the first wireless technology designed from the ground up to be energy efficient and sustainable. It dictates a 90% improvement in spectral efficiency compared to 4G, and telecommunications vendors have developed several technologies and features to improve energy efficiency, including:
- Massive MIMO (mMIMO) antennas, which contain a large number of antenna elements, are now deployed in both mid-band and high-band frequencies. mMIMO antennas are easily scalable and “reliably increase the quality, throughput, and capacity of the radio link to use the same amount of energy to transmit more data.”
- Beamforming focuses a wireless signal toward a specific receiving device instead of spreading the signal out in multiple directions, as is common with some antennas. Thus, the total energy usage is reduced by not sending signals to where it’s not needed.
- mmWave frequencies, or high-band, run roughly from 24-39GHz. These signals can carry significantly more data than low- or mid-bands while using less energy per transmitted bit.
Even more broadly, the mobile industry has identified additional ways to help reduce energy consumption. One approach is targeted at the construction of cell sites, which typically need to be cooled to prevent heat build-up in electronic equipment. Sites have been re-designed to reduce or eliminate the need for costly and power-intensive air conditioning. Some radios are also designed to offer natural convection cooling to further reduce power requirements. Another method is the use of dual-, tri-, and quad-band radios instead of single-band radios, allowing operators to support two or more spectrum bands in one unit. This can reduce the number of radio deployments and energy can be saved depending on the relative power consumption of the radios.
There is some industry discussion around the adoption of virtualized RAN and Open RAN, and how these advanced technologies could help save more energy. Several companies teamed up in 2022 to “quantify the reduction in power consumption of a multi-vendor, cloud-based, and fully virtualized O-RAN system.” Results were promising, with a 9% reduction in energy savings in high-traffic trials and 12% in low-traffic trials.
Samsung saves power at multiple levels
With sustainability as a core value, Samsung is leading the charge in reducing energy usage in mobile networks. With its industry-leading virtualized RAN (vRAN) solutions, Samsung has led large-scale commercial deployments of vRAN and Open RAN around the world. Samsung’s vRAN software saves power by virtualizing and centralizing the BBU, resulting in less hardware and yielding less power needed per site in certain architectures. Moreover, Samsung’s latest offering, vRAN 3.0, offers a range of smart power-saving features.
Samsung’s power-saving software capabilities include the CPU Core Sleep Mode and Energy Saving Feature Orchestrator (ESFO). CPU Core Sleep Mode is a feature that reduces power consumption by automatically putting the CPU in “sleep mode” during periods of low data traffic. ESFO is an orchestration tool that manages multiple energy saving features in one platform, optimizing energy efficiency with no service interruption. ESFO automatically analyzes hourly traffic patterns and optimizes the operating conditions of each Energy Saving feature, per sector and time zone.
In addition to these software features, Samsung’s in-house chipsets are designed to save power consumption in radios. Equipped with the company’s 5G modem System-on-Chip (SoC), Samsung’s baseband units can deliver doubled capacity with 40% lower power consumption. Further, Samsung is developing virtualized and centralized artificial intelligence and machine learning energy saving capabilities to elevate sustainability to next level.
Conclusion
The 2022 Mobile Net Zero Report by GSMA reports that the industry strongly supports a carbonization reduction. Specifically, “50 operators representing 63% of the industry by revenue and 44% by connections have committed to rapidly cutting their emissions over the next decade.” The GSMA reports that nearly 85% of network managers and buyers rate energy efficiency and sustainability as ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ important, their highest-rated priority. This commitment from the industry and the tools and practices described above should help cut energy usage significantly and reduce the wireless networks’ contribution to worldwide sustainability efforts.