Energy-Aware UMTS Access Networks

The sensitiveness toward energy consumption problems is driving Telecommunications operators to optimize network equipment utilization. Since cellular systems are often dimensioned for peak hour traffic, during low traffic periods, such as night, many devices are underutilized but still, by being active, consume power. In this paper, we show that dynamic planning, consisting in reducing the number of active access devices when traffic is low, can achieve significant power saving. In our study, we consider three different UMTS scenarios with a simplified traffic model describing three classes of services, quality of service guarantees, link-budget, propagation and electromagnetic exposure constraints.