An economic viability analysis on energy-saving solutions for wireless access networks

As the energy bill for mobile operators rises with the continuing traffic growth, energy efficiency problems attract an increasing attention in the telecommunication industry. However, the investment for the implementation of any energy-saving solution could be so costly that it may not achieve the total cost reduction. Therefore, the economic viability of the proposed solutions is of substantial importance for the operators in the process of investment decisions. In this paper, we present a methodology for assessing the economic viability of energy-saving solutions. We conduct two case studies using the proposed methodology, and analyze the cost-benefit tradeoff for: (i) hardware upgrade enabling dynamic sleep mode operation at the base stations (BSs), and (ii) energy efficient network deployment minimizing the network energy consumption. Simulation results show that the hardware upgrade can save up to 60% of energy consumption particularly when the high data rate requirement forces low network resource utilization. Consequently, the solution is shown to be increasingly cost effective as the unit energy cost increases. Network deployment optimized for energy efficiency is shown to bring about further energy savings, but it demands denser deployment of BSs. Thus, it is not deemed as economically viable considering today's cost values.