Power Consumption versus Traffic and Deployment in CDMA Based Wireless Networks

The deployment of new networks based on 3G and beyond as well as Long Term Evolution (LTE) technologies is accelerating worldwide to satisfy the ever-increasing user appetite for higher data rates. The new deployed base stations and power amplifier requirements are exerting pressure on the relative electrical grids as well as increasing the CO2 emissions substantially. It has been reported that more than one half of the network operating cost is in the form of electrical energy. Therefore, reducing cellular networks power consumption is becoming one of the hot topics of today´s deployment of heterogeneous radio access networks. It makes sense from economical as well as environmental point of view. Among other factors, power consumption is impacted directly by the service requests and load delivered. In this paper, the required power consumption for each service as defined by the 3GPP standards is analyzed and simulation results will be presented for power consumption of different UMTS services. The results allow establishing the relationship between the power requirements and the traffic volume. Additionally, the relationship between power and cell size is analyzed.