Wireless Network Energy Efficiency

People: ​Ivan Seskar, N. K. Shankaranarayanan, Sarat Puthenpura, Alex Stancu, Zhuohuan Li

Green networks, wireless network energy efficiency and energy savings are very active areas of research and development. Energy Efficiency of Open RAN networks has been identified as a top priority by mobile network operators, and the Energy Savings Use Case and Features are a top priority and area of intense activity in the O-RAN Alliance.

WINLAB has ​received funding for a research project on "5G Energy Efficiency – Metrics, Models, and System Tests" to develop testing methods that assess the energy consumption and efficiency of individual 5G network components and end-to-end Open RAN architectures. For details on the NTIA Energy Efficiency project objectives and workplan, please see EnergyEfficiencyProject .

While the goals of energy efficiency apply to all wireless networks, the most active discussions are in the context of O-RAN networks. For more details on energy efficiency and energy savings discussions in O-RAN Alliance, please see OranEeEs .

Experimental research and testing at WINLAB will use some dedicated network resources (in the rrail subdomain) as well as WINLAB network resources such as SDR, UE emulators. For details of the system architecture, please see EeSysArch .