Multi antenna techniques to improve energy efficiency in LTE radio access network

The main drivers in the design of current radio access networks have been so far coverage and capacity to provide service and a related good quality, but new directions are emerging with growing relevance, both for existing and future networks. Among them energy efficiency is the most relevant and challenging at the same time and innovative networks, besides providing a good quality of service, shall present the minimum energy consumption as well. In this paper, developed in the framework of the EARTH project, beamforming multi antenna techniques are dealt with as possible means to achieve energy savings goals in radio access networks, with particular focus to LTE. Reconfigurable and adaptive antennas are introduced as beamforming multiple antennas solutions, and the concept of active antennas is presented as a feasible implementation for both. Gains in the overall throughput and spectral efficiency are shown, and the related gains in energy efficiency are under evaluation with the adoption of a feasible power model.