Energy Efficiency of 5G

DEGREE PROJECT IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING,
SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 2020
Energy Efficiency of 5G
Radio Access Networks
S. KRISHNA GOWTAM PEESAPATI
KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE
Energy Efficiency of 5G
Radio Access Networks
S. KRISHNA GOWTAM PEESAPATI
Master in Communication Systems

Date: November 9, 2020
Supervisor: Meysam Masoudi
Industrial Supervisors: Sören Andersson, Magnus Olsson
Examiner: Cicek Cavdar
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Host Company: Huawei Technologies Sweden AB
Abstract
The roll-out of the fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks alongside existing gen-
erations and characterized by a dense deployment of base stations (BSs) to serve
an ever-increasing number of users and services leads to a drastic increase in the
overall network energy consumption (EC). It can lead to an unprecedented rise in
operational expenditure (OPEX) for the network operators and an increased global
carbon footprint. The present-day networks are dimensioned according to the peak
traffic demands, and hence are under-utilized due to the daily traffic variations.
Therefore, to save energy, BSs can be put into sleep with different levels following
the daily load variations. Selection of the right sleep level at the right instant is
important to adapt the availability of the resources to the traffic load to maximize
the energy savings without degrading the performance of the network.
Previous studies focused on the selection of sleep modes (SMs) to maximize energy
saving or the sleep duration given configuration and network resources. However,
adaptive BS configuration together with SMs have not been investigated. In this
thesis, the goal is to consider the design of the wireless network resources to cover
an area with a given traffic demand in combination with sleep mode management.
To achieve this, a novel EC model is proposed to capture the activity time of a 5G
BS in a multi-cell environment. The activity factor of a BS is defined as the fraction
of time the BS is transmitting over a fixed period and is dependent on the amount
of BS resources. The new model captures the variation in power consumption by
configuring three BS resources: 1) the active array size, 2) the bandwidth, and 3)
the spatial multiplexing factor. We then implement a Q-learning algorithm to adapt
these resources following the traffic demand and also the selection of sleep levels.
Our results show that the difference in the average daily EC of BSs considered can
be as high as 60% depending on the deployment area. Furthermore, the EC of a BS
can be reduced by 57% during the low traffic hours by having deeper sleep levels as
compared to the baseline scenario with no sleep modes. Implementing the resource
adaptation algorithm further reduces the average EC of the BS by up to 20% as
compared to the case without resource adaptation. However, the EE gain obtained
by the algorithm depends on its convergence, which varies with the distribution of
the users in the cell, the peak traffic demand, and the BS resources available. Our
results show that by combining resource adaptation with deep sleep levels, one can
obtain significant energy savings under variable traffic load. However, to ensure the
reliability of the results obtained, we emphasize the need to guarantee the convergence
of the algorithm before its use for resource adaptation.
Keywords— Resource adaptation, Activity factor, Power modeling, Energy-efficiency,

5G, Q-learning
Sammanfattning
Under de senaste åren har intresset för energieffektivitet (EE) av mobila kommu-
nikationssystem ökat pågrund av den ökande energiförbrukningen (EF). Med femte
generationens mobilsystem, vilket kännetecknas av mer komplexa och kraftfulla
basstationer (BS) för att betjäna ett ständigt ökande antal användare och tjänster,
riskerar nätverkets totala EF att öka ytterligare. Detta kan leda till en markant
ökning av operativa utgifter (OPEX) för nätoperatörerna och ett ökat globalt koldiox-
idavtryck. Många studier har visat att dagens nätverk ofta är överdimensionerade
och att radioresurserna är underutnyttjade pågrund av variationerna i det dagliga
trafikbehovet. Genom att anpassa BS radioresurser efter trafikbehovet kan man
säkerställa att man uppfyller användarkraven samtidigt som man minskar den totala
EF.
I denna studie föreslås en aktivitetsbaserad metod för att utvärdera EF för
en BS. Aktivitetsfaktorn för en BS definieras som den bråkdel av tiden som
BS är aktiv (sänder data) under en fast period och är beroende av mängden
radioresurser. För att kvantifiera EF för en BS föreslås en ny modell som beräknar
ineffekt till BS som funktion av utstrålad effekt från BS. Den nya modellen
fångar variationen i energiförbrukning med tre huvudsakliga radioresurser som är:
1) antal sändarantenner 2) bandbredd och 3) den spatiella multiplexingfaktorn
(antal användare som schemaläggs samtidigt). Därefter implementeras en Q-
inlärningsalgoritm för att anpassa dessa resurser efter det upplevda trafikbehovet
och vilolägen som BS kan växla till när den är inaktiv. Ett viloläge innebär att viss
hårdvara i BS stängs av.
Resultatet visar att man genom att identifiera rätt typ av BS utifrån lokala
trafikförhållanden kan fåenergibesparingar såhöga som 60%. Vidare kan EF för en
BS reduceras med 57% under den tid av dygnet dåtrafiken är som lägst genom att ha
djupare vilolägen jämfört med basscenariot utan vilolägen. Genom att implementera
Q-inlärningsalgoritmen som anpassar tillgängliga radioresurser till trafikbehovet
minskar den genomsnittliga EF för BS ytterligare med upp till 20%. Vinsten i EE
som erhålls av algoritmen beror dock till stor del pådess konvergens, som varierar
med fördelningen av användarna i cellen, topptrafikbehovet och BS tillgängliga
radioresurser. Resultatet visar att genom att kombinera resursanpassning med
vilolägen kan man fåbetydande energibesparingar under varierande trafikbelastning.
För att säkerställa tillförlitligheten av de erhållna resultaten betonas emellertid
behovet av att garantera konvergensen av algoritmen innan den används för
resursanpassning.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
at KTH and Huawei Technologies, Sweden for giving me this opportunity to do
my thesis in this upcoming field of energy-efficient networks. I extend my heartfelt
gratitude to all my supervisors and my examiner, who have been instrumental in
guiding me and shaping this thesis work over the past eight months. Firstly, I extend
my gratitude to my industrial supervisors, Sören Andersson, and Magnus Olsson,
for giving me this opportunity. This industrial experience was truly worth it. It
helped me understand the importance of doing research work that is practically
implementable and significant. I thank them for their valuable support, inspiration,
and guidance throughout this thesis work. Their keen eye for the finer details had a
significant impact on the quality of my work and my performance as an independent
researcher. Their constant encouragement, motivation, and persistence during the
challenging phases of this thesis made all the difference. I thank them for that.
I would then like to thank my academic supervisor, Meysam Masoudi, for his
valuable support and guidance. His constant supervision and feedback ensured the
smooth progress of my thesis work. As an active researcher himself, Meysam has
been a very supportive and wonderful person to interact with and to discuss various
technical aspects of this project.
I thank Cicek Cavdar, my thesis examiner at KTH, for examining and advising
my thesis project. She has been much more than just an examiner for this project.
I thank her for taking great interest in my work and for her valuable ideas and
comments throughout this period. Her expertise in this field of energy-efficiency
and green networks helped in laying a strong foundation and setting the tone and
direction for this work.
Finally, a big thank you to my family and friends for providing me with unfailing
support and encouragement throughout this long journey. This accomplishment
would not have been possible without you all. Thank you.
S. Krishna Gowtam Peesapati

Contents
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Sammanfattning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Acknowledgement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
List of Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
List of Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Research questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.5 Delimitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.6 Structure of the thesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2 Mobile Communications 6
2.1 How different is 5G from the previous generations? . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Need for developing energy-efficient networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.1 Increasing EC of the BSs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.2 Increasing BS density . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.3 New services and service types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.2.4 Increasing OPEX and CAPEX costs for the network operators 9
2.2.5 A quest to reduce global carbon emissions . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.6 Over-dimensioned networks and under-utilized BS resources . . 11
3 5G 12
3.1 How will 5G improve the current network? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.2 What changes could potentially pave way for improving the energy
efficiency of future networks? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2.1 Lean Signaling Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.2.2 Flexible radio resource allocation in NR . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3.2.3 Massive MIMO Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
3.2.4 Carrier aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
4 Energy efficient networks 21

4.1 How can networks be made more energy efficient? . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.1.1 Advanced Sleep Modes (ASMs) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
4.1.2 Adaptive mMIMO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
i
CONTENTS
5 Related works 24
6 Evaluation methodology 27
6.1 Designing an energy efficient network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.2 Long-term large-scale traffic modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.2.1 Large-scale traffic modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.2.2 Long-term traffic modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.3 Network dimensioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6.4 Power consumption model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
6.5 System and signal model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.5.1 Channel matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.5.2 User rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
6.5.3 Activity factor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
6.6 Energy performance evaluation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7 Solution Methodology 40
7.1 Reinforcement learning approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
7.2 Q-learning proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
7.2.1 Hyperparameters in Reinforcement Learning . . . . . . . . . . . 43
8 Evaluation environment, parameters, and assumptions 44

8.1 Tool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
8.2 Baselines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
8.3 Q-learning parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
8.4 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
9 Results and discussion 47

9.1 Results from the analysis of the novel evaluation methodology . . . . . 47
9.1.1 Variation in the power consumption with load . . . . . . . . . . 47
9.1.2 Impact of the array size on the activity factor . . . . . . . . . . 48
9.1.3 Impact of bandwidth on the activity factor . . . . . . . . . . . 49
9.1.4 Is it better to deploy 64T or 4T BS from an energy perspective? 51
9.1.5 Impact of deeper sleep modes on the energy consumption . . . 54
9.1.6 Impact of cell radius on the energy consumption of a BS . . . . 57
9.2 Q-learning results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.2.1 Proof of convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.2.2 Working of the resource adaptation algorithm . . . . . . . . . . 59
10 Conclusions and future work 64

10.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
10.2 Future work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
ii
List of Figures
2.1 Contrasting features of a 5G deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2 Cellular IoT connections by segment and technology (billion) [1] . . . . 7
2.3 Typical wireless cellular network power consumption breakdown [2, 3] 9
2.4 OPEX cost analysis of a cell site [2] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.5 Power consumption of various components of the BS [2] . . . . . . . . 10
3.1 Downlink heavy slot format [4]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

3.2 Slot aggregation for a downlink heavy transmission [4]. . . . . . . . . . 16
3.3 Spatial diversity in mMIMO [5] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
3.4 Beamforming in mMIMO [5] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.5 Impact of the number of antenna elements on the radiated beamwidth 18
3.6 Different carrier aggregation techniques [6] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.1 Daily traffic profile [7, 8] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

6.2 Three sector deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
7.1 Reinforcement learning [9]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
9.1 Variation in the power consumption of the BS with the number of

users served simultaneously (Kc ) and the bandwidth (B) . . . . . . . . 48
9.2 Impact of the active array size on the activity factor . . . . . . . . . . 49
9.3 Impact of the bandwidth on the activity factor . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
9.4 Energy consumption variation over 24 hour period for different array
sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
9.5 Activity factor variation over 24 hours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
9.6 Variation in the energy consumption of a 4T and 64T BS over 24 hours 52
9.7 Variation in the energy consumption of a 4T and 64T BS across
different deployment areas in the year 2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
9.8 Reduction in energy consumption with deep sleep modes . . . . . . . . 55
9.9 Impact of deeper sleep modes over a 10-year span . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
9.10 Comparison in the energy savings due to deeper sleep modes in a 4T
and 64T BS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
9.11 Variation in the EC per BS with cell radius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
9.12 EC per sq.km for varying cell radius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
9.13 Cumulative rewards over different number of episodes . . . . . . . . . . 59
9.14 Daily variation in the activity factor with the implementation of the
resource adapting algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
9.15 Variation in the configurations through the day . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
iii
LIST OF FIGURES
9.16 Heat-map showing the most preferred action in a given state for a peak
traffic demand of 975 Mbps=km2 at 08:00 PM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
9.17 Daily variation in the energy consumption of a base station with the
implementation of the resource adaptation algorithm . . . . . . . . . . 63
iv
List of Tables
3.1 Minimum and maximum number of resource blocks . . . . . . . . . . . 14

3.2 Different numerologies and their characteristic parameters . . . . . . . 15
3.3 Numerologies and their corresponding symbols per slot . . . . . . . . . 16
4.1 Sleep modes and their duration [10, 11, 12] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
6.1 Deployment areas [13] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

6.2 Device categories, their mix and their corresponding growth rates . . . 28
6.3 Data traffic volume in GB/month for different device types for the
years 2020, 2025, 2030 [1, 13] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.4 Peak traffic demand in different deployment area for the years 2020,
2025, 2030 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6.5 Power model parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
6.6 Energy performance evaluation parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6.7 List of variables, their definitions, and their values . . . . . . . . . . . 38
6.7 List of variables, their definitions, and their values . . . . . . . . . . . 39
8.1 Baseline parameters for simulations considering a 4T BS to be deployed 44

8.2 Baseline parameters for simulations considering a 64T BS to be deployed 45
8.3 Q-Learning parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
8.4 Power consumption variation of different configurations . . . . . . . . . 45
8.5 Sleep modes activation-deactivation times [13, 11, 10, 14, 15] . . . . . 46
9.1 Simulation parameters for proof of convergence of Q-learning . . . . . 59

9.2 Baseline configuration of the base station . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
v
List of Acronyms and
Abbreviations
APN Access Point Name
ASM Advanced Sleep Modes
BS Base Station
CDN Content delivery network
CRS Cell-specific Reference Signal
CAPEX Capital Expenditure
DL Downlink
DLP Daily Load Profile
DTV Daily Traffic Variation
EC Energy Consumption
EE Energy Efficiency/Efficient
eMBB Enhanced Mobile Broadband
ICT Information and Communication Technology
mMTC massive Machine Type Communication
MIMO Massive-Input-Massive-Output
OPEX Operational Expenditure
PBCH Physical Broadcast Channel
PTRS Phase Tracking Reference Signal
PSS Primary Synchronization Signal
QoE Quality of Experience
vi
LIST OF TABLES
QoS Quality of Service
RAN Radio Access Networks
RAT Radio Access Technology
RL Reinforcement Learning
SS Synchronization Signals
SSS Secondary Synchronization Signal
SVD Singular Value Decomposition
TCO Total Cost of Ownership
TDD Time Division Duplex
Tx Transmitter
Rx Receiver
UE User Equipment
UL Uplink
URLLC Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communication
vii
Chapter 1
Introduction
The fifth-generation (5G) as an advancement in communication technology is

typically characterized by the dense deployment of base stations (BSs), a growing
number of users (UEs), and the types of services catered. The previous generations
mainly focused on delivering high data rates to the UEs. A large number of
devices has resulted in a drastic increase in the volume of data and network energy
consumption. The traffic volume is expected to increase by 1000x times by 2020, and
the number of connected devices would touch the 50 billion mark by 2021 [16]. With
such staggering numbers, it is essential to ensure that their requirements of all UEs
are satisfied in an EE manner.
Due to the varying requirements of the different services, the deployed networks
need to be more flexible and adaptable. 5G networks, in general, are expected to offer
very high data rates (typically of Gbps order) at very low latency while ensuring that
the stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of the users are satisfied. The
other requirements can be satisfied by having a manifold increase in BS capacity to
serve the UEs. However, network densification increases the risk of networks growing
power-hungrier. As found in [17], by 2025, the overall ICT energy consumption could
add up to 30% of the global energy consumption. In the case of mobile networks,
BSs consume about 80% of the total energy of cellular networks and this offers a
potential to improving their energy efficiency improvements.
This problem further is exacerbated by an ever-increasing proliferation of smart
devices, the introduction of new emerging multimedia applications, together with
an exponential rise in wireless data multimedia demand and usage that creates
a significant burden on existing cellular networks. The major challenge for
the researchers and the network operators lies in identifying the energy-efficient
deployment for a given area to serve a given amount of traffic demand. Furthermore,
one must take into account the energy constraints, the network, and performance
requirements during the optimization process. Traditional network optimization
techniques have been in-efficient in dynamic environments. However, machine
learning (ML) has proved to be useful as it allows the system to learn intelligently
from network traffic data and optimize the overall operation of the network. Indeed
the study [18] has found that virtualization technologies can improve the energy
efficiency and resource utilization of the BSs and can result in up to 50% reduction
in energy consumption.
1
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
ML has also proved to be useful in reducing the EC in the data centers by

intelligent resource allocation and management. Several ML approaches have been
looked at to improve the energy efficiency (EE) of 5G networks. For example,
supervised learning has been used to improve the EE of massive MIMO systems
through efficient channel estimation and detection. Likewise, unsupervised learning
has been used to solve clustering and dimensionality reduction problems in networks.
In the case of clustering, BSs with similar behaviors are grouped to operate in an
EE manner under varying load conditions. The use of reinforced learning has been
limited to scenarios where there is no or little availability of prior data required for
processing.
The demanding nature of future technologies requires appropriate hardware,
efficient and intelligent learning techniques, and new network designs to improve
the EE of the networks. To ensure that we achieve these goals, ML can help in
dealing with several challenges faced in 5G networks and pave the way to integrate
several new technologies in an energy-efficient manner. The motivation behind this
work is to delve into this field of intelligent networks for a greener tomorrow.
1.1 Problem
The problems associated with 5G networks from an energy efficiency perspective are
as listed below:
• The roll-out of 5G may result in an increased overall energy consumption of

the network
• The new kind of services along with the increase in the traffic demands may
also result in a increased network energy consumption
• Higher energy consumption means increased operational expenditure (OPEX)

for the network operators
• The increased energy consumption leads to increased CO2 emissions negatively

impacting the climate
With the predicted number of mobile subscriptions set to exceed 8.9 billion by the
end of 2025 [1], the challenge to keep the level of energy consumption low remains wide
open. From an economic and environmental perspective, it is necessary to ensure that
our future systems are both efficient and sustainable [1]. The focus of this work will
be on possible improvement in the energy savings that can be obtained by combining
BS sleep modes with two other techniques namely, Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output
(MIMO) adaptation and bandwidth adaptation.
1.2 Research questions

The research questions that this thesis is seeking to answer are:
1. What is the power model that can capture this variation in the power
consumption with factors like the array size, the bandwidth etc., on the BS?
2
2. How much impact do the BS resources (the array size, the allocated bandwidth)
have on its power consumption? What does the general variation in power
consumption look like?
3. How does the daily energy-consumption of a BS vary with the amount of

resources available?
4. With BSs/products having different abilities available in the market; can we

say one kind fits all areas while ensuring energy efficiency? Does the amount
of resources available have an impact on the energy savings obtained?
5. Can we really save energy by changing the BSs configuration/resources when

serving traffic with high data rate requirements?
6. What, when, and how should the BS resources be adapted to the offered load
in order to achieve a better scaling of energy consumption to traffic demand in
a 5G scenario?
7. How can these dependencies be modelled flexibly and implemented to accu-

rately evaluate the 5G energy performance?
(a) How can these techniques be used (independently or in combination) to

improve the energy efficiency (EE) without degrading the quality of service
(QoS) experienced by the users?
(b) How can this resource adaptation be quantitatively measured and evalu-
ated?
1.3 Purpose
The purpose of this thesis is to address the above research questions towards
improving the energy consumption of the modern telecommunication systems.
According to the results of the study [19], the total annual operational electricity
consumption of the overall ICT networks in the year 2015 was around 242 TWh
which corresponded to 1.15% of the total electricity grid supply. The operational
carbon emissions from the same sector was close to 169 Mtonnes CO2 in the same
year. This corresponded to 0.34% of all carbon emissions. The study found that
over a span of 5 years from 2010 and 2015, the electricity consumption of the ICT
networks grew by 31% from a level of 185 TWh which corresponded to 0.97% of the
total electricity grid supply. During the same period the operational carbon emissions
grew by 17%. This could be compared to the increase in number of subscriptions from
6.7 billion to to 9.0 billion during the same period. The introduction of new mobile
system technologies to support the rapid growth in traffic along with an increase in
the density of BSs deployed to meet these demands contribute to the increase in the
overall energy consumption of the network. This increase persists to be a threat to
the environment as well as the profitability of the industry as operator revenues may
remain flat [20, 21].
We look to develop a model that captures the variation in the power consumption
of a BS with the load. We then aim to design a load-adaptive algorithm that
minimizes the energy consumption of the BSs through dynamic resource adaptation
3
and advanced sleep modes subject to the offered load. Successful implementation
of the proposed algorithm would reduce the energy consumption of the radio access
network (RAN), benefiting both the environment and the network operation OPEX.
The goal then would be to maximize these benefits without compromising on the
service availability and quality experienced by the users.
A conscious effort will be made to ensure this thesis complies with ethical,
sustainable, and social requirements. The ideas developed independently or through
discussions will be given their due credit in the form of referencing or citations as
and when deemed appropriate. The data from publicly available sources will be
referenced appropriately. On the whole, it will be ensured that this thesis work
would be of benefit to society, and the environment in a positive way.
1.4 Goals
The goal of this thesis is to reduce the network energy-consumption (EC) in a given
deployment scenario by implementing different energy-saving features to reduce the
EC of the BSs while satisfying the minimum QoS requirements of the UEs. To achieve
this goal necessitates a clear understanding of the different deployment scenarios in
terms of their UE density, distribution, and the average traffic demand over 24 hours.
From a system-level perspective, detailed knowledge with regards to the available BS
resources would help in obtaining reliable results. The path towards realizing the
proposed idea is divided further into the following sub-tasks:
1. Traffic demand modelling (and prediction)
(a) Predicting the future traffic demands from the current statistics for
different geographical regions, characterized by their population density
(b) Drawing out reasonable estimate of the peak and off-peak load
2. Network dimensioning for different geographical regions
(a) Given available spectrum, selecting base station configuration and deploy-
ment density in order to meet traffic demand
3. Power modelling
(a) Listing out the possible energy saving features/configurations for the
different BS types
(b) Analyzing the variation in the power consumption of a given energy saving
features/configuration with offered load
(c) Analyzing the power savings obtained through reduced active-time when
using a particular configuration to serve an offered load
(d) Quantifying the impact on latency due to different sleep levels
4. Design a traffic-load dependent BS resource adaptation algorithm
(a) Modeling a representative RL algorithm that identifies the most energy

efficient configuration to serve a given traffic load
4
(b) Maximize the sleep duration achieved by opting for a EE configuration

while meeting the minimum QoS requirements of the UEs
(c) Improving the convergence speed of the RL algorithm by reducing the
action space in different states
(d) Evaluating the energy gains of the implementation over a baseline
1.5 Delimitations
The task of improving the energy efficiency of radio access networks can be addressed
from different levels in the protocol stack. One approach could be to improve the way
users are scheduled based on their delay and throughput requirements. Scheduling
is itself is a very complicated task that involves the allocation of the available time-
frequency resources to the contesting users based on their demands. Modifying to
optimize or improve the current scheduling algorithm is beyond the scope of this
thesis. Instead, this work will look to limit/optimize the BS resources available to
the scheduler at a given point in time and thereby evaluate the energy gains in this
process.
The focus will be on frequencies below 6 GHz. Higher frequencies in the range 6-
100 GHz require further analysis from a deployment perspective due to increased path
losses and hence is beyond the scope of this work. Also, the reinforcement learning
(RL) algorithm so implemented will be modeled to identify the best energy-saving
feature/configuration in a single cell and will not consider multi-cell optimization
of resources. Nevertheless, the feature optimization in the single-cell will take into
account the activity of the closest interfering cells. The use case that is of interest
in this thesis is Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB). Other use cases such as
massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) and Ultra Reliable and Low Latency
Communication (URLLC) that have different requirements in terms of latency and
throughput have not been considered in this work and will be considered in the future.
1.6 Structure of the thesis

This thesis is divided into nine chapters. In Chapter 2, we look into the differences
between 5G technology and the previous generations. We also present the need
for developing energy-efficient networks. In Chapter 3, we cover the various ways
in which 5G will improve the energy consumption of a network. We look at the
technical aspects of 5G and the flexibility it offers. In Chapter 4, we cover two
techniques namely, advanced sleep modes and adaptive MIMO for energy-efficient
networks. In Chapter 5, we present a detailed analytical evaluation methodology
to evaluate a network’s energy performance in different deployment scenarios. In
Chapter 6, we present the solution methodology which consists of a reinforcement
learning-based resource adaptation algorithm. In Chapter 7, we define the evaluation
environment and the baseline parameters. The result from the evaluations and the
conclusions are presented in Chapters 8 and Chapter 9, respectively.
5
Chapter 2
Mobile Communications
This chapter looks into how mobile communications have evolved over the years to
cater to changing UE requirements. It provides background information on the need
for developing energy-efficient networks and the steps that are followed during this
process. It covers areas like traffic modeling and prediction, network dimensioning,
power modeling, and energy performance evaluation. Additionally, this chapter also
describes the energy-saving features like MIMO and bandwidth adaptation while
covering the related work in these areas. Before we look into the above areas, it is
important to understand the differences between the 5G technology and the previous
generations.
2.1 How different is 5G from the previous generations?

The cellular network consists of three components, namely, the mobile devices, the
radio access network, and the core network. The fifth-generation mobile networks
may have the same high-level architecture as previous generations, but with different
intricate details. The mobile device could be anything from a smartphone, a tablet,
a computer to a simple sensor with a transmitter. The radio access network consists
of the BSs which connected to the core network. The BSs connect various mobile
devices to the core network. The core network plays an important role in setting up
the communication between two different networks. It also records UE information
for billing and other purposes. Of the three components mentioned above, most of
the changes in 5G are said to occur in the BSs and the core network.
5G will be different from the previous generations in the following ways:
1. Higher frequencies of operation: 5G will start to make use of higher frequencies

bands in the millimeter wave region for radio communications by combing them
with bands in the lower frequencies ranging from 700 MHz. Works [22] and [23]
in particular have looked into cm-wave and mm-wave regions of the spectrum
that could be exploited.
2. Smaller cells: Higher operating frequencies leads to higher attenuation in the

signal power as it propagates between the BS and the UEs. To reduce these
losses, the cell sizes in a 5G network has to be made smaller as compared to
the previous generations.
6
CHAPTER 2. MOBILE COMMUNICATIONS
Figure 2.1: Contrasting features of a 5G deployment
3. Additional complexity in interference and handover management: Smaller cell

sizes would mean the BSs are now much closer to each other. This leads to
additional complexity in managing problems such as increased interference and
frequent handovers as the mobile devices move from one small cell to another.
4. Support for a large number of devices: 5G will see a very large numbers of
devices per cell connected to the network. It is estimated that about 5 billion
IoT devices will be connected to the network by the year 2025 [1]. Most of
these will be the common household devices and small sensors which now have
the capability to connect to the network as and when needed. It would also
evolve to support devices and services with varying requirements in terms of
delay and the power consumption.
Figure 2.2: Cellular IoT connections by segment and technology (billion) [1]
5. Sophisticated signal and data processing techniques: 5G will make use of
7
techniques like mMIMO, carrier aggregation (CA) and spatial multiplexing in

order to improve the efficient use of bandwidth. It would also evolve differently
when it comes to processing data from a large number of connected devices.
Most of the data processing would now be shifted to a central location in order
to decrease the load on the BS as well as to provide for the extra computing
power.
While 5G is more energy-efficient as compared to the previous generations when

deployed as a standalone (SA) technology, it is expected to increase the network EC
when deployed on top of existing networks as a non-standalone (NSA) technology.
From the perspective of a network operator, and the environment, the following
reasons motivate us to improve the energy-efficiency of the networks in the future.
2.2 Need for developing energy-efficient networks

As mentioned previously, the non-standalone (NSA) deployment of 5G along with
more BS resources in terms of the number of antennas, the bandwidth and other
hardware blocks contributes to its increased EC. Also, adding more BSs to ensure
that the coverage as well as the capacity requirements of the UEs are satisfied leads
to an overall increase in network EC [2]. In this section, we look at some of the
reasons that contribute to increased RAN EC. We also present the need to reduce
this EC as much as possible.
2.2.1 Increasing EC of the BSs

As pointed out by the authors in [24] and in works as early as [25], BSs consume about
60 - 80% of the total energy in a network [26, 20] and, with the 5G BSs equipped
with more hardware resources (larger antenna arrays, wider bandwidths, etc), make
them power-hungry. Along with that, deploying these BSs over existing networks
risk to drive up their EC [27].
2.2.2 Increasing BS density

As we look to exploit the frequencies in the mm-wave region and beyond in 5G, there
would be higher path losses as the radio signals propagate between the UEs and the
BS. The frequency-dependent path loss increases with the distance between the UE
and the BS. While these losses can be compensated by reducing the distance between
the UE and the BS, it leads to an increase in the number of BSs required to cover
a given area and in turn the overall network EC. The report [27], predicts that to
build a 5G network on top of the existing 4G network, one would need an additional
4.75 million 5G macro BSs to achieve the equivalent coverage as offered by 4G. If
one plans to switch to millimeter-wave high-frequency bands, the number of micro
BSs required would double up to 9.5 million. This increase in the BS density adds
up drastically to the overall network EC.
2.2.3 New services and service types

With the introduction of new services and service types, there is an exponential
growth in the traffic served by the BSs. As a result, most of the BSs now remain
8
Figure 2.3: Typical wireless cellular network power consumption breakdown [2, 3]
active for a major portion of the day serving UEs leading to an increased overall
network EC [28].
2.2.4 Increasing OPEX and CAPEX costs for the network opera-
tors
According to the authors in [2, 3]; the operating expenditure (OPEX) and capital
expenditure (CAPEX) account for over 60% and nearly 40% of the total cost of
ownership (TCO) respectively. Furthermore, electricity accounts for 41% of the
OPEX costs for the operators (see Fig.2.4). Deploying 5G networks increases this
cost due to the increase in the BS density in a given region. Depending on the
roll-out strategy, it is possible for the BS to consume as high as 60% of the total
network EC (see Fig.2.3). To reduce the network EC, one would have to improve the
energy-efficiency of the future BSs [29].
2.2.5 A quest to reduce global carbon emissions

Increasing the number of BSs leads to an increase in the EC and CO2 emissions,
which in turn leads to global warming. Moreover, the challenge to meet the diverse
requirements of the UEs has also resulted in increased ICT EC. By 2025, the ICT
industry itself could be responsible for 30% of total power consumption and up to
3% of global carbon emissions [30]. Furthermore, 80% of the total energy consumed
by cellular networks is due to the BSs [17]. Therefore, it is quite important to
reduce the energy consumption and carbon emissions from the ICT sector. One
approach could be to reduce the number of BS deployed in a given area. However,
this negatively impacts the network coverage, and the UEs experience lower network
capacity and lower quality of experience (QoE). Consequently, it is important to
develop more energy-efficient solutions while ensuring that the UE requirements are
satisfied. Techniques such as Advanced Sleep Modes (ASMs) and Radio Resource
Adaptation algorithms have been looked into to reduce the idle and active mode EC,
9
Figure 2.4: OPEX cost analysis of a cell site [2]
Figure 2.5: Power consumption of various components of the BS [2]
10
respectively. Tapping into renewable energy sources such as wind and solar energy
to power the BSs have also been considered [2, 3].
2.2.6 Over-dimensioned networks and under-utilized BS resources

A network is said to be over-dimensioned when the number of BSs deployed to cover
a given area is far greater than what is needed to serve the peak traffic demands.
Over-dimensioning of networks adds up to the CAPEX for the network operators
[31] and also leads to the under-utilization of the network resources as the number
of UEs served at any point during a day is far less than the maximum number that
can be served.
The under-utilization of BS resources together with the availability of extra
hardware resources results in an increased active power consumption of the BSs as
these resources remain turned on yet not fully utilized during this time. This problem
is further aggravated due to the varying load experienced by a BS. As a result, the
BS operates under low load for most of the day [7]. The authors in [13] have shown
that load fluctuates between 3 - 16% during the non-peak and peak hours of the day.
One approach to improve BS resource utilization is through the proper dimensioning
of the network by taking into account the current and future demands. Network
dimensioning will further be elaborated in Section 6.3.
In Chapter 3, we will look into how the flexibility of 5G can be exploited to

improve the energy-efficiency of the BSs.
11
Chapter 3
5G
In the previous chapter, we looked into some of the differences between 5G and
the previous generations. We also presented the need for developing energy-efficient
networks. In this chapter, the focus will be on the finer details of the 5G technology
which when exploited improves the overall energy-efficiency of the system. Some of
the features that are of particular interest in this work include 1) the flexible frame
structure and slot format, 2) the use of massive MIMO technology to improve both
the performance and capacity experienced by the users in the network and 3) the
ability to aggregate a large number of carriers to meet the high data rate requirements
of the users.
3.1 How will 5G improve the current network?

5G is characterized as an evolution of the existing 4G technology to cater to the
exponentially increasing demands of the users and the growing number of services.
From exploiting the vast spectral resources available beyond 6 GHz to having a
more flexible and streamlined signaling process, 5G has evolved to serve devices
with varying capabilities while ensuring that both the user experience as well as the
network energy consumption are improved. This evolution aims at improving the
network by:
• Enhancement of Network Flexibility: Improving the network's flexibility

through content delivery networks (CDNs) which employ intelligent content-
request routing mechanism to serve the users and also by provisioning new
Access Point Names (APNs) and their associated signaling [32].
• Improving network layer support: 5G aims to provide automatic topology
mapping and pathology-free routing capability. This is to ensure a flexible
internet architecture for the future.
• More flexible mobility solutions: It would provide enhanced mobility solutions
by reducing the signaling overhead between the RAN and the core network
for stationary devices or small packets through improved packet routing
algorithms.
• Multi-RAT Integration and Management: Multiple radio access technology
allows a mobile device to connect to more than one type of cellular network. For
12
CHAPTER 3. 5G
example, cellphones can generally connect to 2G and 3G networks or 2G, 3G,

and LTE networks. 5G NR would provide operators with additional options
for designing multi-layer networks by adding small cells to boost the network
capacity and deliver new services. It would help in integrating, maintaining,
and improving the trusted non-3GPP access mechanism.
• Enhanced Efficiency for Short-Burst or Small-Data Communication: It would

enable a connectionless mode of operation for devices with small data packets.
This reduces the time delay that comes with setting up and tearing down a
connection between the user and the access point.
• Better user experience: By increasing the amount of information known,

analyzed and stored in the network; 5G aims to provide more relevant and
better context-based services to the users.
3.2 What changes could potentially pave way for improv-

ing the energy efficiency of future networks?
The energy consumption of the network has always been a major concern for most
operators. The growing number of users combined with the densification of the
network would further increase its energy consumption. However, the flexibility in
5G NR to manage and dynamically allocate radio resources depending on the traffic
demands and user requirement opens up the potential to save energy by improving
resource allocation. Some of the key areas that could streamline and improve network
energy consumption will be covered in the following sections.
3.2.1 Lean Signaling Design

The basic principle of lean signaling design is to minimize any transmissions that are
not related to the delivery of user data and maximize the idle duration of the BS
[12]. These include signaling for synchronization, idle mode mobility, and system and
control information. Together with channel estimation, mandatory signals contribute
a major portion to network energy consumption. Their periodicity has an impact
both on the duration and depth of sleep, and consequently, on the possible energy
savings due to sleep modes. The periodicity of the Synchronization Signals (SS) in
5G can be set at 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160 ms. This allows for sleep durations that
are 25-800 times longer (during idle periods) when compared to LTE where the cell
specific reference signals (CRS) are transmitted every 0.2 ms. This reduced signaling
creates a potential for the BS to switch down to deeper sleep levels during the low
traffic periods thereby, conserving more energy.
Apart from reducing the network energy consumption, lean signaling design also
helps to tap the benefits obtained by using advanced antenna systems (massive
MIMO). It would enable multi-user beamforming of signals to the users resulting
in increased signal power [12]. Reducing the number of mandatory broadcast signals
also leads to lower interference problems especially during peak hours of the day.
This also has an impact on the user rates as they experience significantly higher
throughput.
13
CHAPTER 3. 5G
3.2.2 Flexible radio resource allocation in NR

Time-frequency resources in NR have the flexibility of being allocated depending on
the requirement. This flexibility is implemented in the form of frequency-domain
scaling (also known as flexible frame structure) and time-domain scaling (also known
as flexible slot format).
Flexible frame-structure and slot format

When compared to LTE, NR offers greater flexibility in frame structure and slot
format. The flexibility in the frame structure takes the form of different numerologies
characterized by different sub-carrier spacing and symbol lengths. The numerologies
indicated by — are listed in Table 3.2. LTE only allows for a single sub-carrier spacing
of 15 kHz whereas, in NR, multiple values of sub-carrier spacings are possible as listed
below in Table 3.2. The numerologies differ from each other in terms of the number of
slots within a sub-frame. This is presented in Table 3.3. This variation in the number
of slots with numerology also allows for its flexible allocation either for uplink (UL)
or downlink (DL) transmission depending on the network requirement.
From a frequency domain perspective, the minimum required bandwidth depends
on the numerology (0-4), the number of resource blocks per sub-carrier and the sub-
carrier spacing as given by:
—
Bandwidth = NSC
RB
∗ NRB ∗ sub-carrier spacing (3.1)
—
RB and
where, NSC NRB indicate the number of sub carriers per resource block and
the number of resource blocks per numerology respectively. The bandwidth available
for UL and DL can be calculated as:
—
BW UL = NRB;UL RB
∗ NSC ∗ sub carrier spacing (3.2)
—
BW DL = NRB;DL RB
∗ NSC ∗ sub carrier spacing (3.3)
The minimum number of resource blocks and the corresponding bandwidth
required for UL and DL transmission across different numerologies is obtained from
[33] and is as follows:
min;— max;— min;— max;—

— NRB;DL NRB;DL NRB;UL NRB;UL
0 24 275 24 275
1 24 275 24 275
2 24 275 24 275
3 24 275 24 275
4 24 138 24 138
Table 3.1: Minimum and maximum number of resource blocks
14
CHAPTER 3. 5G
Sub-carrier
Minimum resource Maximum resource Minimum bandwidth, Maximum bandwidth,
— spacing,
blocks blocks MHz MHz
kHz
0 24 275 15 4.32 49.50
1 24 275 30 8.64 99.00
2 24 275 60 17.28 198.00
3 24 275 120 34.56 396.00
4 24 138 240 69.12 397.44
Table 3.2: Different numerologies and their characteristic parameters
In this work, we set the numerology to be 0. The resultant subcarrier spacing is

15 kHz. The number of resource blocks per subcarrier (NSC RB ) is set to 12 and the
minimum bandwidth required for uplink or downlink is calculated according to the

Equations 3.2 and 3.3.
Flexible slot format

The time-domain analysis consists of allocating symbols either for UL or DL
transmission. A symbol can be explicitly allocated for UL or DL transmission or
can remain flexible. A scaling factor for DL transmission can be calculated as:
symbols for DL
Scaling factor =
total number of symbols
symbols for DL
Scaling factor =
14
The slot format indicates the allocation of each symbol within a slot. Assuming
TDD mode of operation, it defines which of the symbols, in particular, are used for
UL and DL transmission within each slot. A slot in NR is equivalent to a subframe in
LTE TDD. While the allocation for UL or DL happens at the subframe level in LTE,
in NR, the symbols within a slot can be configured in one of the 61 predefined ways.
This symbol level control allows for using the time domain resources as efficiently
as possible by allocating them either for UL or DL transmission depending on the
traffic demand and the user requirements.
It is also possible to leave a symbol un-allocated either for uplink or downlink.
Specifically, NR allows for using only a part of the subframe for data transmission
while leaving the rest idle. It is during these idle symbols that the BS can activate
symbol-level sleep modes to reduce its energy consumption.
The predefined symbol combinations within a slot improve the flexibility of
scheduling in NR in TDD mode of operation. These combinations allow for
implementing various types of scheduling mechanisms to serve different kinds of
services with different requirements while creating opportunities to implement various
sleep modes during the inactive periods. As we focus on analyzing the potential
energy savings during the downlink transmission from the base station to the user,
we fix the number of symbols for downlink and uplink transmission to 12 symbols and
1 symbol, respectively. The slot formats that are of particular interest are presented
in Figures 3.1 and 3.2.
15
CHAPTER 3. 5G
Figure 3.1: Downlink heavy slot format [4].
Figure 3.2: Slot aggregation for a downlink heavy transmission [4].
slot f r ame;— subf r ame;—

— Nsy mbol Nslot Nslot
0 14 10 1
1 14 20 2
2 14 40 4
3 14 80 8
4 14 160 16
Table 3.3: Numerologies and their corresponding symbols per slot
3.2.3 Massive MIMO Beamforming

As spectral bandwidth is becoming an ever more scarce and valuable commodity for
radio communications systems, techniques that utilize the available bandwidth most
efficiently are gaining much popularity. Massive MIMO (mMIMO) systems have
been widely used due to their ability to improve the spectral efficiency by a large
factor. Some other advantages include increased throughput and signal to noise
ratio, increased capacity, reduced latency, increased data rate, and energy efficiency.
In particular, mMIMO beamforming makes use of multiple antennas at the Tx and
Rx to transfer multiple parallel data streams to several users using the same time-
frequency resources and without requiring additional bandwidth or transmit power.
Furthermore, by taking advantage of a radio-wave phenomenon called multipath,
the spatial dimensions can be utilized to improve the performance and range. A UE
with multiple Rx antennas can fulfill its minimum SINR requirements by combining
data streams arriving from different paths and at varying times. This ability makes
mMIMO technology one of the most promising wireless techniques to be employed
in recent years. One can thereby achieve a significant leap in spectral efficiencies
while keeping the existing macro base station grid. Furthermore, by operating at
higher frequencies in the mm-wave region in 5G and beyond, these systems can
overcome the problems of channel hardening and correlation among antennas. From
a physical perspective, a mMIMO system consists of many small antennas replacing
a single bulky antenna. These antennas are probably much easier to manufacture
and develop.
The transition to mMIMO systems does bring along a lot of desirable characteris-
tics. They are beneficial both to the UEs and the BSs and vastly improve the overall
16
CHAPTER 3. 5G
Figure 3.3: Spatial diversity in mMIMO [5]
network performance without requiring additional bandwidth or power. However, the

effectiveness of this technology is not always guaranteed and largely depends on the
accurate estimation of the channel condition between a UE and the BS [34]. In the
next sub-section, we will look at some of the advantages of using mMIMO systems
from an energy-efficiency perspective.
Advantages of massive MIMO

• Increased channel capacity: The channel capacity is defined as the maximum
transmittable data rate measured in bits per second. Spatial multiplexing to
the UEs increases the channel capacity through multi-layer data transmission
on multiple independent data streams transmitted simultaneously between the
UE and the BS (see Fig.3.4). The improvement in channel capacity depends
on the scattering environment and helps in decreasing the fade margin of the
UEs. While the calculation of a mMIMO channel capacity is quite complicated,
one could consider the capacity of an M-layer transmission to be equivalent to
M independent single-input-single-output (SISO) streams [35, 34]. As given
in [36], the capacity of a mMIMO system grows linearly with the size of the
antenna arrays and is expressed as:
C = min (Mt ; Mr ) Blog (1 + SINR) (3.4)
• Improved performance: Under poor channel conditions, a mMIMO system

can improve the performance of the UEs by exploiting the phenomenon of
multipath. With both TX and RX CSI, multiple antennas at both transmitter
and receiver lead to independent parallel channels and allow for broadcasting
the same information on these paths [36]. By using suitable combining
techniques, one can achieve a higher SNR at the receiver [35].
• Inexpensive and low power PAs: When compared to traditional single antenna
systems, in a mMIMO array, the total radiated power is divided equally
amongst all the radiating antennas. It results in lower power per antenna
element that can be satisfied by replacing the expensive and high power PAs
used in conventional systems by hundreds of low-cost amplifiers with power in
the milliwatt range. A large number of amplifiers also mean that the strict
constraints on the linearity and accuracy of the individual amplifier and RF
chain are relaxed.
17
CHAPTER 3. 5G
Figure 3.4: Beamforming in mMIMO [5]
• Reduced intra-cell and inter-cell interference: With narrower and more directed
beams, a mMIMO system ensures most of the radiated energy to be focused
over a very narrow area. As a result, there is less dispersion of the radiated
energy leading to lower interference problems for both the UEs in the serving
cell as well as the neighboring cells (see Fig.3.5). However, this reduction in
interference comes at the cost of very sophisticated algorithms and systems
required to find the exact location of the users and to direct the beams with
high accuracy.
Figure 3.5: Impact of the number of antenna elements on the radiated beamwidth
18
CHAPTER 3. 5G
How can the efficiency of a mMIMO system be improved?

While the above mentioned advantages come with the use of massive MIMO systems,
the gains can further be improved in the following ways:
1. Using higher frequencies: The minimum spacing between antenna elements

depends on the frequency of operation. Having a lower spacing than necessary
results in increased correlation between the signals from different antennas.
One way to achieve zero correlation is by decreasing the wavelength; the higher
the frequencies, the lower are the chances for correlation [24]. Higher frequency
of operation allows us to have reduced spacing between the antenna elements
in an array and thereby allowing us to accommodate more antenna elements
within a given physical space.
2. Using volumetric rather than linear spacing: The advantage of having a planar
array lies in its ability to perform frequency scanning along the horizontal and
vertical directions. In other words, a planar array allows for greater control
over the direction of the beams along both the planes (horizontal and vertical).
Also, from a deployment perspective, it is much easier to mount a plane array
when compared to a linear array with the same number of antenna elements.
3. Using spatial modulation: Spatial modulation enables us to reduce the number

of RF chains needed for a mMIMO system without compromising on the
spectral efficiency. By using one RF chain for multiple antennas allows us
to decrease the number of hardware components connected to the antenna
array. This technique effectively uses one antenna from the array at a time
for transmission. The BSs further increase the data rate by dividing the data
stream into separate streams that are then transmitted simultaneously over the
same interface.
Spatial multiplexing can be divided into two types: 1) single-user (SU) and 2)
multi-user (MU) spatial multiplexing. By exploiting the benefits of transmit
diversity, one could send the same data stream from multiple antennas to the
same user thereby, increasing the received SINR at the user terminals. This is
beneficial for cell-edge users who generally experience low SINRs [35].
3.2.4 Carrier aggregation

Carrier aggregation (CA) is a technique used in order to increase the data rate
experienced by each user by assigning multiple frequency blocks (also known as
component carriers) to the same user. The increase in the data rate is given by
the Shannon formula.
C = Blog2 (1 + SINR) (3.5)

CA has been used in both FDD and TDD modes and involves aggregating narrow
carriers referred to as component carriers (CC) to increase the overall bandwidth.
LTE allows the aggregation of up to 5 CCs, each with a bandwidth of 1.4, 3, 5, 10,
15, or 20 MHz. In NR, it is possible to aggregate up to 16 component carriers, each
having a bandwidth of up to 400 MHz. The total aggregated bandwidth in LTE and
NR is limited to 100 MHz and 6.4 GHz, respectively. In NR, carrier aggregation
19
CHAPTER 3. 5G
generally is implemented by combing a band from the 700-900 MHz range and one
from the higher bands in FR1 to meet both the coverage and data rate requirements.
The possibility to aggregate a larger number of carriers in NR as compared to LTE
paves way for achieving unprecedented data rates in NR.
NR gives the flexibility to aggregate a different number of carriers for both UL
and DL. In FDD, the number of CCs, as well as the aggregated bandwidth for UL,
is lower or comparable to the DL while in the case of TDD, the number of CCs, as
well as the bandwidth is comparable for both DL and UL transmissions. Similar to
LTE-Advanced, aggregation in NR is further classified into three types based on the
selection of the aggregated CCs, namely,
• Intra-band, contiguous: The CCs are within the same operating frequency
band and are contiguous in nature
• Intra-band, non-contiguous: The aggregated CCs are selected with gap/gaps

between them and belong to the same operating frequency band
• Inter-band, non-contiguous: The aggregated CCs belong to different

operating frequency bands
Figure 3.6: Different carrier aggregation techniques [6]
In this work, the impact of aggregating bands up to 100 MHz of bandwidth will
be studied and analyzed for different deployment scenarios. In the next chapter,
we will look at two techniques that have been developed to exploit the flexibility
offered by 5G, as presented in previous sections. Specifically, we will look into the
implementation of Advanced Sleep Modes (ASMs) and adaptive mMIMO techniques
that help towards improving the energy consumption of the base station under
varying traffic loads.
20
Chapter 4
Energy efficient networks
In this chapter, we look into two techniques namely: Advanced Sleep Modes (ASMs)
and Adaptive MIMO which have been developed and implemented to improve the
energy-efficiency of the base stations. These techniques have been developed to
exploit the flexibility offered by 5G as presented in the previous chapter.
4.1 How can networks be made more energy efficient?

Various approaches have been tried, tested and implemented in the past with the
aim of improving the energy-efficiency of wireless networks and some of the notable
ones are the following:
4.1.1 Advanced Sleep Modes (ASMs)

To reduce the fixed power consumption of the base station, certain hardware resources
can be turned off during the idle periods, when no data or control signals are to be
transmitted or received. The choice of the hardware that is turned off at any given
instant depends on three parameters namely, the available sleep time, the current
traffic demand and the activation-deactivation time of that particular hardware
resource [10, 37, 31, 7, 13, 38]. This switching off of different components to conserve
energy is popularly known as sleep modes.
Each sleep mode level involves turning off hardware blocks with similar activation-
deactivation times. Depending on the hardware turned off; the various sleep modes
are characterized by sleep deltas indicating the depth of sleep. These deltas take
values between 0 and 1 with values closer to 0 indicating deeper sleep. The reduction
in power consumption is measured relative to the idle mode when no hardware
components are turned off.
There are a good number of works that have focused on duration of different sleep
modes along with the hardware components that could be turned off at different sleep
levels. The authors in [10] proposed a strategy to implement the ASMs and to manage
users whose service requests occur whilst the BS is sleeping. The authors in [15],
proposed a sleep management strategy based on Q-learning approach to find the best
combination and durations of the sleep modes depending on the network traffic load
and the operator’s policy regarding energy reduction versus latency. Their results
show that indeed high energy gains (up to 90%) can be obtained using ASMs, with
21
CHAPTER 4. ENERGY EFFICIENT NETWORKS
some degradation in throughput depending on the load, the signaling periodicity, and
latency requirements. Furthermore, the sleep modes have be categorized popularly
into 4 levels as follows [39]:
• SM1: This is the shortest sleep mode with a minimum sleep duration of 71—s
(OFDM symbol duration). Some of the components that could be turned off
are the power amplifiers, some components of the digital baseband along with
the analog front-end of both the receiver and transmitter.
• SM2: This level corresponds to a longer sleep duration of 1ms and requires
a transition time (1 sub-frame or TTI) of 1ms. Here, some more additional
components of the analog front-end are disabled compared to the blocks in
SM1.
• SM3: In this sleep mode, the power amplifier along with all the components
of the digital baseband are disabled. Furthermore, all the components that
form a part of the analog front-end are switched off with an exception of the
clock generator. The duration of sleep is minimum 10ms with an activation-
deactivation time of additional 10ms.
• SM4: This is the deepest sleep that the BS could possible drop down to and
it corresponds to the standby mode in which all the components are turned off
except those responsible for control signaling. The minimum sleep duration is
1s with an activation-deactivation time of additional 1s.
Minimum sleep
Sleep level Activation time Deactivation time
duration
SM1 35.5 —s 35.5 —s 71 —s
SM2 0.5 ms 0.5 ms 1 ms
SM3 5 ms 5 ms 10 ms
SM4 0.5 s 0.5 s 1s
Table 4.1: Sleep modes and their duration [10, 11, 12]
Sleep modes in 5G
The reference signals are used in NR are quite similar to their role in LTE.
The difference lies in their periodicity. Unlike LTE where we have CRS (Cell
Specific Reference Signal) that is transmitted every 0.2 ms, primary and/or
secondary synchronization signals (PSS/SSS) transmitted every 5 ms, and the PBCH
transmitted every 10 ms; NR does away with CRS while it combines the PBCH
demodulation reference signal and PSS/SSS into a single Synchronization Signal
Block (SS block) that is transmitted periodically with a periodicity that may vary
from 5 ms up to 160 ms.
This flexibility in the periodicity of the SS block transmission allows the BS to
switch down to deeper sleep levels, SM2 or SM3 during the low traffic hours. These
deeper sleep modes allow the BS to conserve more energy by turning off most of their
hardware components. Switching down to SM4 is still not possible in 5G due to the
maximum SS block periodicity of 160 ms. This periodicity is much lower than the
minimum sleep duration in SM4 of 1s.
22
CHAPTER 4. ENERGY EFFICIENT NETWORKS
4.1.2 Adaptive mMIMO

The benefits of massive MIMO arrays are a plenty and now it is well known that
massive MIMO can cater to very high capacity demands as pointed out by the authors
in [40] and in Section 3.2.3. However, due to the the significant variation in the
network load throughout the day, these arrays consume greater amount of energy
during the off-peak hours of the day. To keep a check on the energy consumption,
one could adapt the number of array elements powered on subject to the input
traffic demand. This is the idea behind adaptive mMIMO where the number of
active antenna elements in the array are varied according to the traffic demand. The
authors in [40] have shown that for a given number of users in a cell, an optimum
number of active antennas which maximizes the energy efficiency can be derived.
By implementing this load adaptive antenna system, they have observed up to 19%
reduction in the EC as compared to a baseline system where the BS always operates
a fixed number of antennas.
Massive MIMO has a positive impact both on the user performance and the
capacity. These impacts are covered in detail in Section 3.2.3. Furthermore, the rate
experienced by the users in a network has an impact on the time taken by the BS
to serve these users, and consequently the activity of the BS. The impact of massive
MIMO arrays on the activity of the BS is elaborated in Section 6.5.3.
23
Chapter 5
Related works
In this chapter, we will look at some of the notable studies that have been carried
out in the past and have been an inspiration for the approach that we adopted in
this work.
• Designing future networks
An insight into the limitations of the 4G cellular networks and corresponding
new features of 5G networks have been presented in the works [16], [23], [41].
Works [23, 41] also presents new architectural changes associated with the
RAN design, novel mm-wave physical layer technologies, details of MAC layer
protocols, and multiplexing schemes needed to support the new physical layer.
[23] also points out major existing research issues and identifies possible future
research directions. The work [41] draws inspiration from the findings of the EU
Celtic-Plus SooGREEN Project and looked at ways to reduce EC and carbon
footprint in the different network segments.
Implementing these architectural changes depends largely on future traffic
demands for different types of services. A detailed statistical report on various
services can be obtained from [1].
• Energy-efficient networks
There have been quite a few works and studies that have explored the area of
energy-efficient networks. This interest has given rise to various EU projects
such as the EARTH [8], and GreenTouch [42, 43] project back in 2011, and
2014 respectively. Notably, the authors in [2] discussed the technical details on
the current energy consumption in base station devices. They also presented
new models and proposed some promising research directions to reduce the EC
of future BSs. Machine learning techniques have been explored in [24, 44] to
improve the energy efficiency in 5G networks while ensuring the capability of
these networks to deliver to a wide range of services. [24] also presents the
challenges that exist in the areas of resource optimization, power allocation,
etc.
In [45], the authors evaluated different means of reducing the PC of BSs

and heterogeneous mobile network deployments (HetNet) considering the time
dimension. They focused on reducing the load of heavily loaded macro cells
either by network densification or by offloading traffic to small cells. The
24
CHAPTER 5. RELATED WORKS
authors found that a reduction of up to 73% in the average daily area PC

can be obtained with network densification. However, this was not a cost-
effective solution. On the other hand, by adding small cells and enabling their
DTX capability, PC reduction up to 29% could be achieved. This technique
was effective especially when users were distributed around hot spots, where
additional coverage and capacity are required. Cell DTX was also studied in
[37].
The theoretical limits on the maximum EE obtainable in a wireless communica-

tion system has been considered in [46]. Much of the inspiration for calculating
the energy requirements of future wireless networks has been drawn from [7],
while the ecological and economic impact of the global carbon footprint of
mobile communications has been covered in [26].
• Cloud-Radio Access Network (CRAN)

One promising approach is to shift the various functions that are presently
executed in the base stations to a remote data center where they are
implemented via software [3]. Doing so could reduce the overall network
EC due to the elimination of redundant hardware and improve the network
performance, and satisfy the requirements of most of the users. The authors
in [18] looked into on-demand provisioning of computational resources in large-
scale systems to reduce their EC. CRANs could reduce the costs associated
with the initial investment and supply while contributing to the CO2 emission
reduction goal.
Furthermore, in [32], the authors proposed a hybrid cloud radio access network
(H-CRAN) architecture to alleviate the mid-haul capacity limitation in C-RAN.
By utilizing functional splitting to distribute the processing functions between a
central cloud and edge clouds, they observed that this technique when combined
with caching at edge clouds reduces not only content access delays but also
front haul bandwidth consumption. A scalable front-haul design was presented
in [29].
In [28], the authors investigate the power minimization problem for the
mobile devices by data offloading in multi-cell multi-user OFDMA mobile edge
computing networks. By considering the maximum acceptable delay as a QoS
metric and by proposing centralized and distributed algorithms for joint power
allocation and channel assignment, the authors observed considerable power
savings up to 60% for large bitstream size compared to local computing baseline.
• Adaptive massive MIMO systems

In [47], the authors explored the benefits of massive MIMO systems for next-
generation wireless networks. Furthermore, they explored the benefits of
massive MIMO in terms of the extensive use of inexpensive low-power compo-
nents, reduced latency, simplification of the MAC layer, and robustness against
intentional jamming. They also presented new challenges of making many low-
cost low-precision components that work effectively together, acquisition and
synchronization for newly joined terminals, the exploitation of extra degrees of
freedom provided by the excess of service antennas, and many more.
25
CHAPTER 5. RELATED WORKS
• Base station power models

To have a better understanding of future networks, it is imperative to have a
good power model that is flexible and captures various power saving options.
In [39], the authors present an advanced power model that supports a broad
range of network scenarios and base station types, features, and configurations.
In addition to power consumption, the model also provided values on hardware
sleep capabilities such as sleep depths, transition times, and power savings.
Similarly, the authors in [13] drew inspiration from the EARTH project and
proposed updates to the large-scale deployment and long-term traffic models to
reflect the situation in a 5G time frame. They also highlighted the importance
of network dimensioning to exactly meet the traffic and user performance
requirements of a given deployment area.
• Resource adaptation/allocation and their resulting trade-offs

In [48], the authors looked at a fair allocation of resources in LTE networks
with carrier aggregation. The impact of CA on the EE of heterogeneous
networks in 5G wireless system has been looked into in [49]. It is now known
that the number of active antenna elements at the BS has an impact on its
EC. In particular, the authors in [40] explored the possibility to adapt these
antenna elements in a massive MIMO system according to the traffic demand to
maximize the downlink EE. Their results showed that a load-adaptive system
achieved an overall 19% higher EE compared to a baseline system where the BSs
always run with the fixed number of antennas. Using reinforcement learning
for user scheduling and resource allocation for Massive MU-MIMO system has
been looked into in [50] and [51]. Paper [52] helps us to understand if multi-
user MIMO systems can play an important role in improving the EE of wireless
networks. In [53], the authors have looked at radio resource management
techniques for eMBB and mMTC services in 5G dense small cell scenarios.
Adapting the radio resources according to the traffic demands to reduce their
EC would result in certain trade-offs from a UE and system level. These trade-
offs are analyzed in detail in [54, 55].
• Advanced sleep modes (ASMs)

ASMs reduce the power consumption of the BSs by gradual deactivation of
the BS’s components depending on the sleep duration available. The available
sleep duration depends on the activity of the BS as well as that of the interferers
[56]. In [17], the authors’ present system-level simulation results on future base
station energy saving using a time-triggered sleep model. By varying the SS
burst periodicity, the authors found the gains to saturate for a periodicity
between 20 - 40 ms. Furthermore, their results indicate that energy-saving
gains up to 22% can be obtained using SMs. In [38], the authors propose a
reinforcement learning solution for SM management in a traffic-adaptive 5G
network. In [15], the authors looked at SM management under varying traffic
loads. In [10], the authors explored the impact of ASMs on the QoS experienced
by the users. Their results show that high energy gains up to 90% can be
obtained using ASMs, albeit with some degradation in throughput and latency.
26
Chapter 6
Evaluation methodology
Designing an energy efficient network is a challenge in itself as they must be deployed

to cater for the current as well the future demands without the need for major
modifications. On the other hand, the data traffic in wireless networks is and
will continue to increase steadily for years to come as more and more services
are introduced [46]. This calls for networks to be designed keeping the future
requirements in mind. Various techniques as mentioned in the previous Section 4.1
and deployment strategies like HetNets have been explored for their potential in
reducing the energy consumption of the overall network, and there have been quite a
few interesting options. Moreover, this is a challenge that must be looked at from the
component, system and network level perspectives in order to arrive at an optimal
solution.
In this chapter, we will look into the evaluation methodology adopted in this
work. We will dwell into the concept of base station activity along with the impact
of massive MIMO adaptation and carrier aggregation on the BS activity factor.
6.1 Designing an energy efficient network

The approach adopted in this work consists of six different phases as outlined in the
following sections from long-term traffic modeling to network energy performance
evaluation. The main focus of this work is on adapting the base station resources
which includes the bandwidth, the array size, and the spatial multiplexing factor
(number of users served simultaneously) according to input traffic demand. To adapt
these resources, the proposed approach takes into account the network level variations
in terms of hourly user traffic demand to come up with an optimal energy efficient
configuration for the current input traffic. An elaborate description of the six phases
is outlined in the following sections.
6.2 Long-term large-scale traffic modeling

The first step in the design process is long-term large-scale traffic modeling. It
involves understanding network level traffic variation over a 24 hour period in different
deployment areas.
27
CHAPTER 6. EVALUATION METHODOLOGY
6.2.1 Large-scale traffic modeling

Large-scale traffic modeling involves understanding the traffic variations over different
deployment areas. It takes into account the geographical statistics of a country,
and how it is built up of different areas with different population densities. These
deployment areas are characterized by different population density and also differ in
their area share. In this work, we consider six different deployment areas as presented
in Table 6.1: Super dense urban (SDU), Dense urban (DU), Urban (U), Sub Urban
(SU), Rural (R), Wilderness (W). The areas are divided based on their population
densities.
The demographic data varies between countries. While some of the Asian
countries are densely populated, most European countries excluding the Nordic
countries have comparable population densities and area share. This work will adopt
the distribution pattern as in [13]. The adopted model had been developed during
the EARTH project [8] and has been extended in [13] to include Super dense urban
(SDU) areas to make it more relevant in the 5G time frame. The division of the
deployment areas are presented in Table 6.1.
Deployment area Population density (P=km2 ) Area share of the country, %

Super dense urban 20000 0.05
Dense urban 3000 0.95
Urban 1000 2.00
Sub urban 500 4.00
Rural 100 36.00
Wilderness 25 57.00
Table 6.1: Deployment areas [13]
Categorizing the areas based on their population density helps in drawing out
reasonable statistics of the peak data traffic demand in a given area. These values
are in turn used as an input for network dimensioning.
6.2.2 Long-term traffic modeling

Long-term traffic modeling involves taking into account the different device cate-
gories, device mixes, their projected growth rates in terms of the number of devices
and their respective data buckets for each of these device categories to obtain the data
traffic volumes for different devices over a 10 year span. The methodology adopted
for traffic modeling is similar to the one in [7] and the growth rates (or percentage
change) for the various device categories are obtained from [1] and are presented in
Table 6.2. Using these values, the data traffic volumes for different device types for
2020, 2025 and 2030 are as presented in Table 6.3.
Growth rate of,

Device category Device mix (%)
Number of devices (%) Data traffic per device (%)
Smartphones 94.00 0.92 26
Mobile PCs 3.50 0.92 11
Tablets 2.50 0.86 15
Table 6.2: Device categories, their mix and their corresponding growth rates
28
Year
Device category
2020 2025 2030
Smartphone 9.39 30.00 95.28
Mobile PC 14.27 24.05 40.51
Tablet 7.36 14.80 29.78
Table 6.3: Data traffic volume in GB/month for different device types for the years
2020, 2025, 2030 [1, 13]
The device mix gives the percentage of the total devices belonging to a particular
category. In this work, we assume the devices to be categorized into three categories
namely: Smartphones, Mobile PCs and Tablets. The corresponding device mix is
presented in Table 6.2. By having an estimate of the number of UEs in a deployment
area and by taking into account the device mix, their growth rates and the data bucket
per device category presented in Tables 6.2 and 6.3, one can obtain an estimate of the
network traffic demand measured in (Mbps=km2 ) in different areas across different
years [13].
From a network perspective, in order to adapt the BS resources, it is important to
know how the traffic varies during a day. The variation is typically plotted as a daily
traffic variation (DTV) or daily load profile (DLP) and takes the shape of the curve
as presented in Figure 6.1. A DTV gives information in terms of the percentage of
active users in a deployment area over a 24 hour period. While this curve could look
different in different deployment areas and also depend on the operator policies and
the type and number of services and customers; in this work, the profile as presented
in Figure 6.1 will be considered for all the deployment areas mentioned in Table 6.1.
This daily variation trend has been found to be applicable across different regions in
Europe [42] and has been used in [7, 13, 8].
Figure 6.1: Daily traffic profile [7, 8]
The percentage of active users is given by ¸(t) and the number of active users in
the peak hour varies between 16% of the subscribers to 2.25% of the total subscribers
during the off-peak hours. The average number of active users stands at around 9.64%
of the total number of subscribers. The data volumes per subscriber as calculated
in Table 6.3 does not depend on the area type and therefore the generated traffic
29
is proportional to the population density () of the deployment area. Considering

a country that is served by Nop operators and each operator carrying N1op of the
total traffic, the areal traffic demand per operator per deployment area, measured in
Mbps=km2 is given as follows:
 X
R(t) = ¸(t) ra –a (6.1)
Nop a
where ra is the average data rate demand of device type a and –a is the ratio of
subscribers of device type a.
In this study, we assume the following share of devices amongst the total
subscribers: 94% smartphone users, 3.5% mobile PCs and 2.5% tablets [1]. The
number of operators is assumed to be 1; Nop = 1. Using the population densities as
given in Table 6.1 and the data requirement for different device types as calculated
in Table 6.3, the peak traffic demands for different deployment areas are calculated
using Equation 6.1 for the years 2020, 2025 and 2030 and are presented in Table 6.4.
Traffic demand [Mbps=km2 ]

Area
2020 2025 2030
Super dense urban 1201.81 3718.21 11595.21
Dense urban 180.00 557.73 1728.28
Urban 60.00 185.91 579.76
Sub urban 30.04 92.95 289.88
Rural 6.01 18.59 57.98
Wilderness 1.50 4.64 14.49
Table 6.4: Peak traffic demand in different deployment area for the years 2020, 2025,
2030
6.3 Network dimensioning

The next step in the design process is network dimensioning of the radio access
network. It involves deciding on the parameters like network topology (homogeneous
or heterogeneous network layout), type of radio base stations, their configurations,
inter-site distances (ISD), etc., in order to ensure that the maximum traffic demands
in a given deployment area are met satisfactorily and without compromising on the
QoS requirements. The outcome of this step is the BS density measured in BS=km2 .
for different deployment areas [13]. In this work, we consider a standard 3-sector cell
site. We consider a cellular deployment with 7 three-sector sites. The serving BS is
located at the center of the three hexagonal cells. (Figure 6.2)
30
Figure 6.2: Three sector deployment
The frequency reuse factor K is set as 1. In a perfectly symmetrical deployment

scenario, inter-site distance or site-to-site distance is defined as the Euclidean distance
between two adjacent sites. Here, we represent the cell radius by Do and the inter-site
distance is calculated as 3 times the cell radius. This gives us the distance between
two BSs to be:
Dj = 3nDo
where n is the tier of interferers. The distance of the interfering BSs, Dj , can take
values ranging from 0 → (2n + 1)Do . Assuming a perfectly symmetrical deployment
scenario, the BS density ˛ can then be calculated as the ratio of the total number of
BSs to the total area and can be expressed as:
Number of BSs 1
˛= = √ (6.2)
Total deployment area 2
3 ∗ 3 23Do
Network dimensioning is a complex step in the process of network design as it
involves considering various factors, namely:
1. Network coverage: The first step is to decide the network coverage. It depends
on the distribution of the users in a geographical area. As mentioned in [13],
typically, the present-day mobile broadband networks cover about 43% of the
geographical area that accounts for 89% of the total population.
2. System parameters: The next step is to decide on the system parameters, such
as network topology, carrier frequencies, bandwidth, etc. In this work, we
consider a homogeneous 3-sectorized macro BS deployment in all deployment
areas. Furthermore, we assume a frequency reuse factor of 1 and the total
available bandwidth to be limited to 40 MHz.
3. Inter-site distance: The final step is to decide the BS density required to

serve the peak traffic demand and meet the performance requirement in each
31
deployment area. Usually, this is determined by running complex system-level

simulations to evaluate the downlink (DL) 5-percentile user throughput during
the busy hours of the day. To ensure that the minimum performance targets
are met satisfactorily, each deployment area is simulated for a range of ISDs to
determine the maximum ISD, which meets the performance targets [13]. In this
work, it is quite challenging to determine the maximum ISD for a deployment
area as we consider a dynamic multi-cell scenario that takes into account the
activity of the interfering BSs as well. In this case, the DL 5-percentile user
throughput depends not only on the system parameters of the serving BS but
also on the system parameters and the peak traffic demand experienced by the
neighboring (interfering) BSs. Therefore, we assume a uniform ISD of 1500m
across all deployment areas i.e., Dj =1500m.
6.4 Power consumption model

The BS power model quantifies the variation in the power consumption of a BS
with load. It links the impact of the power consumption at the component level
on the system level thereby allowing for quantifying the EC as well as for studying
the possible energy savings from a network level perspective. The power model is
largely dependent on the BS type and hence it must be ensured that the implemented
model fits the base station under consideration [7]. The total power consumption of
a base station can be categorized into two parts namely: the load-dependent and the
load-independent power consumption.
Load-dependent power consumption

The load dependent power consumption can also be called as the active power
consumption and depends on the bandwidth (B) and the number of users served
by the BS (Kc ) [56]. It is a sum of the variable baseband power consumption and
the load dependent power consumption of the power amplifiers and can be expressed
as follows:
Pload−dependent = Pbaseband + PP A (p) (6.3)

where,
» „ «–
Mc B 1
Pbaseband (Mc ; Kc ; B) = ARc + 2+ Kc
Lbs Tc
„ « „ «
3BMc B
+ 2
Kc + Kc3 (6.4)
Lbs 3Tc Lbs
» –
1
PP A (p) = Mc (p + ›Pmax;P A ) (6.5)
(1 + ›) ”
Here, Mc is the active array size at the BS, Kc is the number of users served
simultaneously and B is the bandwidth allocated to each user. A is a sum of the
encoding and decoding power, Rc is the average user rate and Lbs is the computational
efficiency of the base station measured in (Gflops/W). Tc is the channel coherence
32
time and it depends on the relative position of the user with respect to the serving
BS.
Load-independent power consumption

The load independent power consumption consists of the power consumption for
site cooling, control signals, DC-DC conversion loss, etc., (Pf ixed ), the circuit
power consumption of the antenna array (Mc Pbs ) and the power consumed by the
synchronization clock (Psy n ). It is written as:
Pload−independent = Psy n + Mc Pbs + Pf ixed (6.6)
Total power consumption

The total power consumption is then expressed as the sum of the load dependent
and the load independent consumption.
Ptotal = Pload−dependent + Pload−independent (6.7)

To assess the power consumption of a 5G base station, we propose the following
power consumption model taking into consideration the impact of: i) advanced
sleep modes (the reduced power consumption of the base station during the inactive
periods), ii) large antenna arrays. The power consumption under no load PB is
a sum of the load-independent power consumption given by Equation 6.6 and the
power consumed by the PA’s when the load parameter p=0. When p = 0, the power
consumption due to the PA’s becomes,
» –
1
PP A (p) = Mc (›Pmax;P A ) (6.8)
(1 + ›) ”
We then express the power consumption under no load as,
» –
1
PB = Mc (›Pmax;P A ) + Psy n + Mc Pbs + Pf ixed (6.9)
(1 + ›) ”
By introducing different sleep modes during which the power consumption of the
BS is reduced due to the switching off various hardware components, the resulting
power consumption model is then given in Equation 6.10. The power consumption
of the BS with different antenna sizes at different sleep levels are given in Table 8.4.
8
>
> Ptotal if p > 0
if p = 0 without sleep
>
<PB
>
>
>
5G
PBS = Ns ∗ ‹1 PB if p = 0; 72—s ≤ Tsleep < 1ms (6.10)
‹2 PB if p = 0; 1ms ≤ Tsleep < 10ms
>
>
>
>
>
‹3 PB if p = 0; Tsleep ≥ 10ms
>
:
The various power model parameters and their values are listed out in the Table
6.5. Furthermore, we make the following assumptions on the relative share of the total
power consumption by the various components namely: i) baseband contributing to
33
20% and ii) RF and fixed power consumption contributing to 80% of the total power
consumption, following the RRH macro model in [7].
Parameter Notation Value

Average user throughput Rc
Load dependent PA power consumption p
Fixed power consumption Pf ixed
Active array size Mc
Bandwidth B
Sum of encoding and decoding power [56] A 1W
BS computational efficiency [56] Lbs 12:8 ∗ 109 Gflops/W
Synchronization clock power [56] Psy n 1W
Channel coherence time [56] Tc 5000 symbols
Base station circuit power [56] Pbs 1W
Maximum power per power amplifier Pmax;P A 3.125 W
Maximum PA efficiency ” 0.25
PA dependent constant [56] › 0.0082
Sleep level 1, SM1 [12] ‹1 0.84
Sleep level 2, SM2 [12] ‹2 0.69
Sleep level 3, SM3 [12] ‹3 0.5
Table 6.5: Power model parameters
6.5 System and signal model

Consider a network consisting of a homogeneous deployment of 3-sector cells. A
single serving BS is considered to be surrounded by six interferers. The BS serves a
total of N UEs in time T . The UEs are assumed to be uniformly distributed in the
cell of radius Do and have a requirement of Ω MB. Denoting the peak traffic demand
by Γp , the hourly traffic demand ‰ in the serving cell i depends on the peak traffic
demand Γp in the given deployment area as well as the fraction of the total number
of active users and is given as:
¸(t)
‰= Γp (6.11)
¸max (t)
where ¸(t) and ¸max indicate the percentage of active UEs at a given hour and
the maximum percentage of active UEs in a day. Their values are obtained from [7].
The number of active users at a given hour can be expressed as:
˛ ˛
˛‰˛
Number of users = ˛˛ ˛˛ : (6.12)
Ω
Considering a downlink (DL) scenario, let Hik ∈ CNxM represent the channel
matrix between the BS i and the UE k. Let Wi represent the weights of the precoder
matrix at the BS. We assume the number of UEs served simultaneously to be given by
Kc during a given time T . The channel is assumed to remain static during the period
of one coherence block given by U = Bw Tc where Bw is the coherence bandwidth
in Hz and Tc is the coherence time in seconds. Perfect synchronization between the
UEs and BSs is assumed and the entire system operates in the TDD mode to exploit
the benefits of reduced complexity due to channel reciprocity [52]. If we assume the
noise to be circularly symmetric complex Gaussian in nature and represented by nk ,
then the received signal Yk by the UE k in cell i can be expressed as [56],
34
N
X X N
X
Yk = HH
ik Wik sik + HH
jk Wjk sjk +nk (6.13)
k=1 j6=i k=1
| {z } | {z }
Desired signal Interference
6.5.1 Channel matrix

The channel matrix can be used to analyse the quality of the channel between the user
and the BS. It can be decomposed into a product of three matrices by a technique
commonly known as singular value decomposition (SVD). It involves factorizing a real
or complex matrix to any m × n matrix via an extension of the polar decomposition.
This technique can be used to analyze the channel matrix Hik between the BS i and
user k. The channel matrix Hik can be decomposed as,
H = U · Σ · VH (6.14)
where, U and V are real or complex unitary matrices of dimension mxm. The
diagonal entries Σ are known as the singular values of the matrix and the number of
non-zero singular values is equal to the rank of Hik . The rank of a channel matrix
between a UE k and a BS i indicates the number of parallel data streams that could
be set up between the two. In other words, the SVD of the channel matrix H results
in the separation of the MIMO channel into independent crosstalk-free transmission
channels with transmission coefficients given by the values of the diagonal elements
in the matrix Σ. Each of these independent channels contributes to the total capacity
of the the MIMO channel. Good gains can be achieved as long as the transmission
coefficients of the matrix Σ are sufficiently large [34].
One can consider the other two matrices U and V to be associated with the
transmitter and receiver respectively. The matrix U transforms the transmit signal
vector at the input into the orthogonal space expanded by Σ. At the receiver, the
matrix V is used to perform the reverse transformation of the original signal vector
space [34]. These matrices help in simplifying the analysis of the channel by masking
the impacts of crosstalk between the independent paths. The two matrices U and V
can be expressed as U = HHH and V = HH H where HH is the Hermitian matrix of
H.
6.5.2 User rates

Considering the downlink (DL) scenario and assuming perfect CSI to be available at
the transmitter and receiver, the achievable rate per UE, k can be written as,
„ «
Sk;i
rk = Bk Nk log2 1 + (6.15)
Ik + Nk
where Nk represents the number of receiving antennas at UE k, Bk represents
the bandwidth allocated to the user, the factor Sk;i represents the signal power at
UE k from BS i, Ik captures the interference power at UE k from the neighbouring
interferers and Nk is the noise power received by the user respectively. These factors
can be written as follows:
35
2
c |Hik Wik | pi Mi
Sk;i = (Mi − Nk ) (6.16)
rk¸ kWik k2 Nk Kc
6 2
X c”j |Hjk Wjk | pj Mj
Ik = ¸ (Mj − Kc ) (6.17)
j=1
(Djk ) kWjk k2 Nk Kc
Nk = ff 2 kWjk k2 (6.18)
where pi and pj represent the power per antenna element at the transmitting
and interfering BSs, Mi is the number of transmitting antennas at BS i, Nk is the
number of receiving antennas at the UE and Kc is the spatial multiplexing factor
indicating the number of UEs served simultaneously. The total power received per
antenna at the UE can then be expressed as Npki M
Kc . The factor (Mi − Nk ) is the array
i
gain which is obtained when we consider a ZF detector at the receiver [40]. Similarly,
|Hik Wik |2
the normalized gains between the BS and the UE can be expressed as kWik k2
with
|Hik Wik |2 = gik and kWik k2 = 1.
For the interference part I, the factor ”j represents the activity of the interfering
BS, K is the frequency reuse factor which is assumed as 1, Do is the cell radius, ¸ is
the propagation constant which takes values ¸ ≥ 2 and ff 2 kWj k2 is the average noise
variance measured over the various channels. In this work, we consider only the first
tier of six interfering BSs around the cell of interest. In a system with a total number
of UEs given by Equation 6.12, the overall cell throughput considering Kc UEs are
served simultaneously can be written as,
Kc Kc „ «
X X Sk;i
R= rk = Bk Nk log2 1+ (6.19)
Ik + N k
k=1 k=1
where Kc ≤ min Total number of users; M2c is the numbers of users served
` ´
simultaneously.
6.5.3 Activity factor

The fraction of the total amount of time T that a BS i remains active while serving
the UEs is known as the activity factor [45]. Denoted by ”, it is calculated as the
fraction of the sum of the time to serve each UE with a requirement of Ωk divided
by the total time T and is expressed as,
PN Ωk
k=1 rk
”= (6.20)
T
Taking into account the rate experienced by each UE as given in Eq.(6.15), the
activity of the BS can be expressed as,
2 3
N
1 4X Ωk
”i = “ ”5 (6.21)
T Kc B k Nk log 1 + Sik
k=1 2 Ik +Nk
36
The maximum spectral efficiency obtained with a given antenna array also
depends on the number of antennas used at the UE Nk . The upper bound on this
efficiency is given by [35]:
“p p ”2
Gupper bound = Mi + Nk (6.22)
Taking into account the upper bounds on the spectral efficiency, the activity
factor of the BS is now modified as,
" N #
1 X Ωk
”i = (6.23)
T Kc max [rk ; rmax (Mi ; Nk )]
k=1
where rmax is the maximum data rate that can be achieved by a UE with Mi
transmit and Nk receive antennas. T represents the observation window over which
we measure the activity of the BS. In this work, we set T to be equal to the
periodicity of the SS block transmission. The observation window and the hourly
input traffic demand determine the overall activity factor of the BS. The flexibility
of NR allows the duration between consecutive SS block transmissions T to take one
of the following values: 5, 10, 20, 40, 80 or 160ms. This periodicity in the SS block
transmission has an impact on the overall activity factor and the sleep duration of
the BS. The longer the duration between consecutive SS blocks, the lower would be
the activity factor of the BS and longer would be the duration during which the BS
can be put to sleep.
6.6 Energy performance evaluation

The EC of the BS during the period T also depends on the transition time to the
opted sleep mode Tac;‹i that the BS switches down to during the idle period. While it
is possible for the BS to switch between two or more sleep levels during the inactive
time T 0 ; in this work, we restrict the possible transitions to just a single level of
sleep. In other words, the BS can switch down to either SM1, SM2 or SM3 during
T 0 . The level of sleep that the BS switches down to depends on the amount of time
that the BS can sleep along with the activation-deactivation time of that particular
sleep mode. Considering Si to indicate whether a given sleep level is activated or not
by assigning binary values 0 or 1, the EC of a BS is given by:
3
!
0
X
Si ‹i PB T 0 − 2Tac;‹i (6.24)
` ´
Ei = ”i T Ns Ptotal +
i=1
Here, Tac;‹i is the activation and de-activation times corresponding to the different
sleep modes and T 0 = (1−”i )T as the time during which the BS remains idle (inactive
time). Assuming each BS in a deployment area serves approximately an equal amount
of traffic; the overall network energy consumption in an area Ar with a BS density ˛
can then be computed as:
Etotal = Ei ˛Ar (6.25)
37
Table 6.6: Energy performance evaluation parameters
Parameter Notation Value

Activity factor ”i
Observation window T
Number of sectors Ns
Active mode power consumption Ptotal
No load power consumption PB
0
Inactive time T
Activation-deactivation time of a sleep level Tac;‹i
Sleep level 1, SM1 [12] ‹1 0.84
Sleep level 2, SM2 [12] ‹1 0.69
Sleep level 3, SM3 [12] ‹1 0.5
Table 6.7: List of variables, their definitions, and their values
Variable Definition Value(s)

Long-term large-scale traffic modeling
 Population density
Nop Number of operators 1
¸ (t) Percentage of active users
ra Average data rate demand per device type a
–a Ratio of subscribers of device type a
Network dimensioning
Dj Distance of the interferering BSs 1500m
n Tier of interferers 1
Do Cell radius 500m
˛ BS density (BS=km2 )
Power consumption modeling

Ptotal Total power consumption of the BS
Pbaseband Baseband power consumption of the BS
PP A (p) Total power consumption of the PA
p Load-dependent power consumption of the PA
Mc Active array size at the BS 2/4/16/32/64
Kc Number of users served simultaneously
B; Bk Bandwidth per user, k 40 MHz
A Sum of encoding and decoding power consumption [56] 1W
Rc Average user rate
Lbs BS computational efficiency in (Gflops/W) [56] 12.8e9 (Gflops/W)
Tc Channel coherence time in symbols [56] 5000 symbols
› Fixed constant (PA dependent) [56] 0.0082
” Efficiency of the PA 0.25
Pmax;P A Maximum power consumption of the PA 3.125W
Pf ixed Baseline/No load power consumption of the BS
Psy n BS local oscillator power consumption [56] 1W
Pbs BS circuit power [56] 1W
‹ Sleep levels/depths [12] 0.84/0.69/0.5
38
Table 6.7: List of variables, their definitions, and their values
Variable Definition Value(s)

Ns Number of sectors 3
Tsleep Total sleep duration
System model
i Serving BS 1
j Interfering BSs 6
k User (UE)
Ωk File size per user k
r (k) Rate of a user k
Hik Channel matrix between BS i and user k
Wi Pre-coder weights at the transmitter
T Observation window 20ms
Ni Receiver diversity (Number of antennas at the receiver) 2/4
Sk;i Signal power of each user k
Ik Interference power of each user k
Nk Noise power
K Frequency reuse factor 1
Mi Number of active antennas at the serving BS 2/4/16/32/64
” BS activity ” ∈ (0; 1]
ff 2 Noise variance
¸ Propagation constant ¸ ∈ [2; 5]
Energy performance evaluation

T0 BS inactive time
Ek Energy consumed per BS
Tac;‹ Activation time from a sleep level ‹
Etotal Network energy consumption
39
Chapter 7
Solution Methodology
7.1 Reinforcement learning approach

Reinforcement learning is a branch of machine learning that works around modeling
and simulating agent-environment interactions close to a real-life scenario. The
objective of these interactions with the environment is to allow the agent to achieve
its goal that is measured in terms of a numerical outcome [9]. To do so, a signal
in the form of a reward (state-action dependent value) is awarded to the agent at
periodic intervals upon interacting with the environment. The goal of the agent would
then be to maximize this accumulated reward over a certain number of time steps by
learning the most suitable action in a given situation or state in the environment. The
environment is defined as everything being exterior to the agent. As the environment
evolves in time, the agent has to adapt itself and to learn it continuously.
These interactions with the environment allow the agent to acquire knowledge
that it can exploit when making its future decisions. The agent can choose to explore
new actions or exploit the known knowledge about the environment to achieve larger
rewards. While opting for exploitation over exploration would produce higher rewards
in the immediate future; exploration allows the agent to discover new knowledge that
could lead to better rewards in the long run. Hence, it is imperative to find a good
trade-off between between exploration and exploitation strategies and one way to
implement this is as a ›-greedy policy. › is defined as the exploration parameter and
takes values between 0 and 1. This parameter controls how often the agent takes an
exploratory action in a given state. The policy can then be written as follows:
Best action with probability 1 − ›


Next action = (7.1)
Random with probability ›
In this work, we will focus on a model-free implementation of the RL problem
using Q-learning.
40
CHAPTER 7. SOLUTION METHODOLOGY
Figure 7.1: Reinforcement learning [9].
7.2 Q-learning proposal

The environment in this problem is quite dynamic and depends on a lot of variables.
Such an environment is often very difficult to model resulting in unknown transition
probabilities between various states. To overcome these problems, it is best to
implement the solution using Q-learning and update the state-action values through
a TD learning approach where the agent interacts freely with the environment in a
random manner without any specific policy.
Here, we consider the agent to take a decision at every hourly interval along the
DLP. For simplicity, we also assume that BS experiences a constant hourly traffic
demand.
• State
A state includes all the information about the past agent-environment interac-
tion that makes a difference in the future. These are generally the parameters
that the agent can know of and that might be useful in deciding which actions
to take in the future. In this work, the activity factor of the serving BS i defines
the states.
The activity factor ” is a continuous variable and can take values ” ∈ [0; 1].
To reduce the state space, in this work, we discretize the activity factor.
Discretization is done by dividing the total space into a definite number of
states m. We then calculate the step size as:
”max − ”min 1
Step size = = (7.2)
m m
and the state as:
”i
State = bxc where x = Step size (7.3)
Here, m > 1 and the values assumed in this work are m = 20 and the resulting
step size is 0.05.
• Actions
The action space contains the possible changes that could be made to the BS
configuration. In other words, it could be all those variables that we want to
41
learn how to set for a given input. The variables or the parameters that are of
interest in this work are the array size (Mc ), the bandwidth allocated (B) and
the spatial multiplexing factor (Kc ). During each iteration in an episode, the
agent adapts each of these parameters independently depending on the input
traffic demand.
Actions = (N; B; Ku )
• Environment
Anything that cannot be changed arbitrarily by the agent is considered to
be outside of it and thus part of its environment. These parameters have an
impact on the agents choices and any modification to those will lead to the agent
opting for an alternative action in the same state/situation. In this work, all
the parameters which have an impact on the activity factor of the serving BS
but are beyond its control form a part of the environment.
The parameters include the frequency reuse factor (K), activity of the
interfering BSs (”j ), their array sizes and their distances from the UEs in the
serving cell. In order to determine the number of active users at a given hour,
we take as input the deployment area (ref Table 6.1) and the deployment year
to obtain the peak traffic demand as calculated in Table 6.4. The peak demand
is then used to calculate the hourly demand according to the DLP in Figure
6.1.
• Reward
In order for the agent to learn the best possible action in a given state, a
numerical value termed as reward is awarded to the agent for its actions. During
the course of interaction with the environment, the agent accumulates both
positive and negative rewards. The sum of these rewards is the value that
the agent must maximize. In this work, the difference in the EC of the initial
configuration and the current configuration for a given traffic demand is the
reward. It is calculated at every time step/iteration (t).
Reward = Et;initial − Et;cur r ent (7.4)
To ensure that the agent identifies the best action in the current state for a
given input traffic demand, positive rewards are awarded as calculated above.
However, an action in any state that results in the new activity factor to be
greater than 1 is penalized with a large negative reward. This is done to allow
the agent to clearly discriminate between various actions in a given state and
also ensure that the activity factor of the BS stays below 1.
The algorithm adopted in this work is as presented below:
42
Algorithm 1 Q-learning algorithm

Initialize the Q table with all zeros
Sample DLP to obtain the hourly traffic demand in Mbps=km2
while Episode < Total number of episodes do
Calculate the initial activity factor (also the initial state) based on the initial
configuration
while Iteration < Total number of iterations do
Choose an action a from the current state St using the ›-greedy policy
Take the action and observe the reward R and the new state St+1
Q(St ; a) ← Q (St ; a) + ¸ [R + ‚maxa Q (St+1 ; a) − Q (St ; a)]
end
end
where,
• The number of episodes is set depending on the minimum number of iterations

that the agent needs to obtain relatively stable rewards for a fixed traffic
demand
• St denotes the current state of the system and St+1 is the new state after taking
the action a
• R is the reward after taking an action a
• ¸ is the learning rate
• ‚ is the discount factor
7.2.1 Hyperparameters in Reinforcement Learning

Hyperparameters are those parameters whose values are used to control the learning
process. In reinforcement learning there are three important hyperparameters,
namely:
• Exploration factor, › - The exploration factor indicate the agents tendency to

explore and take a random action in a particular state. It takes a value between
0 and 1. The closer the value to 1, the higher the probability of exploration by
the agent.
• Discount factor, ‚ - The discount factor determines how much a RL agent

cares about the rewards in the distant future and those in the immediate future.
Setting ‚=0, the agent will only learn about actions that produces an immediate
reward, whereas for ‚=1, the agent will evaluate each of its action based on
the sum total of all of its future rewards.
• Learning rate, ¸ - The learning rate determines to what extent the newly
acquired information of a given state-action value override the old information
for the same pair. It is assigned a value between 0 and 1. Higher the value,
greater the change to the previous values.
43
Chapter 8
Evaluation environment,
parameters, and assumptions
8.1 Tool
The entire evaluation framework along with the implementation the Q-learning
algorithm was coded and develop in Python without relying on any system level
simulator.
8.2 Baselines
Apart from the Q-learning parameters, there are various other inputs such as the
cell radius, the peak traffic demand, the daily variation profile, etc., which have an
impact on the overall energy savings obtained in a given deployment area. Hence, it
is important to define baseline that can serve as a reference to compare the energy
savings obtained by implementing the Q learning algorithm. In this section, we
present the various baselines that would be used for comparison.
The various deployment areas and the peak traffic demands are as presented in
Table 6.4. The traffic demand variation follows the profile in Figure 6.1. Unless
explicitly stated, the baseline parameters in simulations with a 4T deployment and
a 64T deployment are given in Tables 8.1 and 8.2, respectively.
Parameter Values
Transmit array size 4
Total bandwidth 40 MHz
Spatial multiplexing factor 1
Cell radius 500 m
Inter-site distance 1500 m
Number of interferers 6
Table 8.1: Baseline parameters for simulations considering a 4T BS to be deployed
44
CHAPTER 8. EVALUATION ENVIRONMENT, PARAMETERS, AND
ASSUMPTIONS
Parameter Values
Transmit array size 64
Spatial multiplexing factor 1
Cell radius 500 m
Inter-site distance 1500 m
Number of interferers 6
Table 8.2: Baseline parameters for simulations considering a 64T BS to be deployed
8.3 Q-learning parameters

The hyper-parameters of the Q-learning algorithm are fixed across all the simulations
and they take the following values:
Parameter Value
States 21
Actions 6 or 7*
Episodes to converge ∼500
Iterations per episode 50
Learning rate, ¸ 0.2
Learning rate decay 0.999998
Epsilon, › 0.2
Epsilon decay 0.99998
Discount factor, ‚ 0.9
Table 8.3: Q-Learning parameters
8.4 Assumptions
In this work, we make the following assumptions regarding the adaptability in the
array sizes in the two BS types. We consider a 64T and a 4T BSs. We assume
that a 64T BS can adapt its active array size to 32 or 16 antenna elements while
a 4T BS can only step down to 2 antenna elements. The adaptation takes place in
accordance with the input traffic demand. Based on the equations in Section 6.4 and
the assumed sleep deltas of 0.84 for SM1, 0.69 for SM2 and 0.5 for SM3 [12], the
sleep mode power consumption of the different configurations is as given below:
Power consumption, W
Configuration
No load Full load SM1 SM2 SM3
64T 252.00 1181.00 211.68 173.88 126.00
32T 208.00 656.00 174.72 143.52 104.00
16T 186.00 397.00 156.24 128.34 93.00
4T 130.00 882.00 109.20 89.70 65.00
2T 90.00 466.00 75.60 62.10 45.00
Table 8.4: Power consumption variation of different configurations
From Section 6.5.3, it is understood that the observation window T has a direct
45
CHAPTER 8. EVALUATION ENVIRONMENT, PARAMETERS, AND
ASSUMPTIONS
impact on the activity factor of the BS. In this work, we assume that the traffic
demand is constant during every observation window in an hour. The SSB periodicity
assumed in this work is 20ms, that means the BS would have to wake up every 20ms
[33]: As a result, we set the observation window T to be 20ms. The activation-
deactivation times different of various sleep modes adopted in this work are as follows:
Sleep mode Activation time Deactivation time

SM1 35 —s 35 —s
SM2 0.5 ms 0.5 ms
SM3 5 ms 5 ms
Table 8.5: Sleep modes activation-deactivation times [13, 11, 10, 14, 15]
46
Chapter 9
Results and discussion
This chapter presents the results obtained from various evaluations. In Section 9.1,
we present the results from the analysis of the activity factor, the new power model
and the network energy consumption due to the varying traffic load. In Section 9.2,
we present results from the Q learning implementation.
9.1 Results from the analysis of the novel evaluation

methodology
Here, we analyse the results obtained from the new analytical approach for evaluating
the energy consumption of a base station in a network setting. This approach takes
into account the fact that the number of users in the system, their traffic demands,
the configuration of the serving base station and the activity of the neighbouring
(interfering) base stations all have an impact on the energy consumption of the
base station under consideration. Firstly, in Section 9.1.1 we show that the load
experienced by a base station varies as it serves different number of users with
given amount of resources. This variation in the load has an impact on its power
consumption. Later, we look at the impact of two parameters namely: 1) the active
array size and 2) the bandwidth on the activity factor of the base station. This is
done in Sections 9.1.2 and 9.1.3 respectively. Finally, we present the impact of deep
sleep modes and the cell radius on the energy consumption in Sections 9.1.5 and 9.1.6
respectively.
9.1.1 Variation in the power consumption with load
47
CHAPTER 9. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Figure 9.1: Variation in the power consumption of the BS with the number of users
served simultaneously (Kc ) and the bandwidth (B)
The above plots show the variation in the power consumption of a base station
with bandwidth and the number of users served simultaneously. The instantaneous
power consumption is calculated using the Equations given in Section 6.4. The new
power model links the dependency of the power consumption on the array size, the
bandwidth and the spatial multiplexing factor. It answers our first research question:
Q1. What is the power model that can capture this variation in the power consumption
with factors like the array size, the bandwidth etc., on the BS?.
This dependency of the power consumption on various parameters has an impact
on the Q learning algorithm as it tries to identifies an optimal energy efficient
configuration to serve a given traffic demand. In the following sections, we will
look into the impact of the array size and the bandwidth on the activity factor of
the base station. We would also present the resulting energy consumption variation
in each of these cases.
9.1.2 Impact of the array size on the activity factor

Here, we analyse the impact of the active array size on the activity factor of the base
station over 24 hours. The total bandwidth is restricted to 40 MHz and the peak
traffic demand is taken as 2000 Mbps=km2 .
48
Figure 9.2: Impact of the active array size on the activity factor
As seen in the Figure 9.2, increasing the array size reduces the activity factor of
the base station. This is particularly observed during the peak hours of the day when
a BS experiences much higher traffic demand due to a larger number of active users.
The lower activity factor resulting from the use of large arrays can be attributed
to the better performance and capacity experienced by each user in the network
(refer Section 3.2.3). Furthermore, large arrays help to exploit the benefits of spatial
multiplexing where multiple users are served simultaneously using the same resources.
It was observed that in the case of a 64T BS, one would achieve only a small gain in
terms of reduced activity by increasing the active array size from 16 to 64. However,
activity factors that are 6 times lower can be obtained during the peak hours by
having a 64T BSs serve these areas instead of a 4T BSs.
9.1.3 Impact of bandwidth on the activity factor

For a given active array size, we found that varying the total bandwidth available has
a far greater ability in reducing the activity factor of the base station over a 24 hour
period. In this simulation, we assume a peak traffic demand of 2000 Mbps=km2 . We
set the active array size to 64 antenna elements and the total bandwidth is varied
from 5 to 100 MHz. We also assume that the active users in the system are served
sequentially i.e., the spatial multiplexing factor is set to 1. The results are presented
in Figure 9.3.
49
Figure 9.3: Impact of the bandwidth on the activity factor
It was observed that at a given hour, one can achieve approximately 26 times
lower activity factor by increasing the bandwidth from 5 to 100 MHz. The decrease
in the activity factor mainly comes from the increased throughput experienced by
the users as multiple carriers are aggregated to serve them (refer Section 3.2.4).
From the above results, one might conclude that the best way to decrease
the activity factor of the base station would be by using large arrays and larger
bandwidth. However, as we saw in Sections 9.1.1 and 6.4, both the bandwidth and
the array size have a direct impact on the instantaneous power consumption of the
base station. Therefore, merely using larger arrays and more bandwidth to reduce
the activity factor might not be enough as the overall energy consumption depends on
both the active mode and the idle mode energy consumption. To validate the above
reasoning, we plot the variation in the energy consumption of a BS with different
array sizes over 24 hours for similar traffic demand of 2000 Mbps=km2 in Figure 9.4.
50
Figure 9.4: Energy consumption variation over 24 hour period for different array sizes
The observed trend is quite interesting as we found that BSs with different active
array sizes to consume a lower amount of energy during different hours of the day.
During the peak hours (1800 - 2300 hrs), a 64T BS consumed approximately 34%
lower energy as compared to 4T BS while the same BS consumed about 60% more
energy during the off-peak hours (0300 - 0800 hours). This indicates that having a
fixed array size throughout the day might not be an energy-efficient option. It also
highlights the potential to save energy by adapting the array size to the variation in
the traffic demand during the day.
9.1.4 Is it better to deploy 64T or 4T BS from an energy perspec-

tive?
In this section, we look to answer the question: Q4. With BSs/products having
different abilities available in the market; can we say one kind fits all areas while
ensuring energy efficiency? Does the amount of resources available have an impact
on the energy savings obtained?. Given that the energy consumption of a base
station depends on various factors like the array size, the bandwidth, and the spatial
multiplexing factor, we now investigate whether it might be better to have a 64T or
4T base station deployed in a given area. As an example, we analyze the variation in
the activity factors and the corresponding energy consumption when these BSs are
deployed in a SDU deployment area with a peak traffic demand of 1200 Mbps=km2 .
The ISD between the BSs was assumed to be 1500m.
In Figure 9.5, we plot the variation in the activity factors of the two types of BSs
over 24 hours. As observed during the peak hours, the activity of the 64T BS was at
least 2x times lower when compared to an 4T BS. In this case, as we limit the spatial
multiplexing ability of the BSs to one user at a time, the decrease in the activity
factor of 64T BS can be mainly attributed to the beamforming gain obtained by
using larger arrays at the BS. Beamforming allows for the transmission of the same
51
data over multiple streams from the BS to the user. This improves the SINR at the
UEs and subsequently results in a higher data rate experienced by them.
Figure 9.5: Activity factor variation over 24 hours
The lower activity factor of a 64T BS allows it to switch down to deeper sleep
modes during the longer idle periods thereby conserving more energy. This is seen in
Figure 9.6 where during the peak-hours, a 64T BS has approximately 4x times (or
approximately 75%) lower energy consumption when compared to an 4T BS.
Figure 9.6: Variation in the energy consumption of a 4T and 64T BS over 24 hours
52
Variation in the energy consumption of the base stations in different

deployment areas
Here, we look at the energy consumption variation of an 4T and 64T base station over
24 hours when exposed to different peak traffic demands. For this, we use the traffic
demands calculated for different deployment areas as given in Table 6.4. Normally,
also different deployments (ISD:s) would be used for the different deployment areas,
but here we are primarily interested in the impact from the traffic demands and
therefore the same ISD of 1500m is used in all areas. The two BSs are operated at
their baseline configurations as given in Tables 8.1 and 8.2 and the resulting energy
consumption variation are as follows.
Figure 9.7: Variation in the energy consumption of a 4T and 64T BS across different
deployment areas in the year 2020
53
From the above results, it can be seen that the variation in the peak traffic demand
has an impact on the energy consumption of the BSs. As we move from a super dense
urban deployment to a sparse (wilderness) deployment area, we find that a 64T BS
goes from being highly energy-efficient to a power-hungry base station. This is due to
the traffic demand of a sparse area being over 100 times lower as compared to a super-
dense region. The energy benefits of a 64T BS are further amplified in super-dense
areas especially during peak hours, where we find that a 64T BS consumes about
60% lower energy when compared to an 4T BS. The same BS goes on to consume
60% more energy during the peak hours when deployed in sparse areas with traffic
demands that are about 100 times lower as compared to SDU areas.
It can be concluded that the type of BS deployed in a given area has a great
influence on the overall energy consumption and the savings obtained. These results
also answer the question Q4. With BSs/products having different abilities available
in the market, can we say one kind fits all areas while ensuring energy efficiency?
Also, does the amount of BS resources available have an impact on the energy savings
obtained?
Furthermore, the advantages of having a 64T base station start to kick in only
when we have considerable amount of traffic to serve. We find that the daily average
energy consumption of a 64T BS is lower when compared to a 4T BS in areas where
the peak traffic demand is higher than 100 Mbps=km2 (this traffic demand is slightly
higher than that of an urban deployment area in the year 2020). This threshold has
been arrived at assuming that the BSs have the ability to switch down to deeper
sleep modes during the idle period and it always utilizes all the available resources
in terms of the array size and the bandwidth during the active time. To improve the
energy-efficiency of the overall network, it might be better to replace the existing 4T
BSs with the new 64T BSs in areas with traffic demand higher than 100 Mbps=km2 .
However, one would have to weigh the benefits in terms of reduced OPEX versus the
cost associated with this replacement (CAPEX).
9.1.5 Impact of deeper sleep modes on the energy consumption

Sleep modes help in reducing the EC of the BS during the inactive periods by turning
off various hardware resources. Depending on the hardware resources that are turned
off (characterized by the sleep deltas), there is a reduction in the static/idle mode
PC of the BS as given in Table 8.4. In this section, we analyze the advantages of
having deeper sleep modes on the energy consumption of the base station over 24
hours. For this result, we considered a 64T BS to be deployed in a super-dense area
with a traffic demand of 1200 Mbps=km2 . The results are compared to the scenario
when no sleep modes are implemented.
54
Figure 9.8: Reduction in energy consumption with deep sleep modes
In Figure 9.8, we observe that deep sleep modes offer a great potential in reducing
the energy consumption of the base station especially during the off-peak hours of
the day. We observed a 57% reduction in the the energy consumption during the
off-peak hours by having deeper sleep modes relative to the scenario when no sleep
modes are implemented. This is 40% more energy savings than symbol level sleep.
It should be noted that the depth of sleep largely depends on the traffic demand
experienced by the BS. And under high traffic demands during the peak hours, it is
often not possible to switch the base station to deep sleep modes. As a result, we
observed that a maximum of 6% reduction in energy consumption by having deep
sleep modes during the peak hours of the day.
Figure 9.9: Impact of deeper sleep modes over a 10-year span
55
In Figure 9.9, we present the importance of having deeper SMs as the traffic
demands increase over a 10-years span. Here, we consider a super-dense urban
deployment scenario where the traffic demand is expected to increase from 1200
Mbps=km2 in the year 2020 to about 12000 Mbps=km2 by 2030 (refer Table 6.4) [1].
To meet these demands, we consider a 64T BSs to be deployed in this area with the
total bandwidth restricted to 40 MHz.
As expected, this 10-fold increase in the average traffic demand over 10-years
increases the average activity factor of the BS by approximately 10x times. As the
BS is more active, the possibility of conserving energy by switching to the deeper SMs
during the inactive periods reduces. However, it was observed that even under high
traffic demands of 12000 Mbps=km2 as predicted in the year 2030; on average, one
can save up to 34% more energy by having deeper SMs as compared to the scenario
with symbol level sleep. The savings are even higher ( 42% in the year 2030) when
compared to the case where no SMs are present.
Finally, we investigate the impact of deep sleep modes on the energy consumption
of two different BSs (an 4T BS and a 64T BS) when deployed in the same area. Here,
we consider a peak traffic demand of 4000 Mbps=km2 and a total bandwidth of 40
MHz. As seen in Figure 9.10, for the given peak traffic demand, the ability to switch
down to deeper SMs has a higher impact in reducing the overall energy consumption
of a 64T BS as compared to an 4T BS.
Figure 9.10: Comparison in the energy savings due to deeper sleep modes in a 4T
and 64T BS
In the above scenario, we observed an average of 15% reduction in the EC relative

to the baseline with deep sleep modes in an 4T BS. This reduction is much lower
when compared to the 50% drop observed in a 64T BS when deployed in the same
scenario. A larger reduction in the energy consumption of a 64T BS is due to two
reasons mainly: 1) the lower activity factor as compared to an 4T BS and 2) the larger
number of hardware components that could be turned off during the idle period.
Together, these factors amplify the overall energy savings that could be obtained by
56
having deep sleep modes.
9.1.6 Impact of cell radius on the energy consumption of a BS

Cell radius plays an important role in improving the overall network energy-efficiency.
An increased cell-radius allows UEs located much further away to be served by the
BS. The cell-edge UEs are much further away from the serving BS. Now, with UEs
more spread out has an impact on the received signal and interference power as
calculated from the Equations 6.16 and 6.18. Furthermore, with the increase in the
coverage area, the traffic served by a single BS also increases. This results in a larger
activity factor and a higher EC per BS as the BS now takes a long time to serve the
users. This is observed in Figure 9.11.
In Figure 9.11, we plot the variation in the EC of the BS with cell-radius. For
this, we consider the deployment of an 4T BS with the total available bandwidth
restricted to 40MHz. The peak traffic demand increases with the increase in the
cell radius. It has been observed that by increasing the cell-radius from 350m to
650m, there has been an average 5-fold increase in the activity factor of the BS. As a
result, the total EC of the BS has approximately been doubled to 3.28 J over a 20ms
window.
Figure 9.11: Variation in the EC per BS with cell radius
However, we observe a contrasting trend from a network level perspective. An

increase in the cell radius reduces the deployment density of the network as fewer
BSs are now needed to cover a given area. This reduced BS density has a positive
impact on the overall network energy consumption in terms of the energy consumed
per square kilometer. This is seen in Figure 9.12.
57
Figure 9.12: EC per sq.km for varying cell radius
9.2 Q-learning results

Finally, we present the results from the implementation of the Q-learning algorithm.
In this work, we opted for a Q-learning algorithm over SARSA (State-Action-Reward-
State-Action) and expected SARSA due to its faster convergence as compared to the
latter two. The goal of the algorithm is to adapt the base station resources that
include the bandwidth, the array size, and the spatial multiplexing factor depending
on the input traffic demand to ensure that the total energy consumption of the base
station is reduced. The algorithm also takes into account the various sleep levels that
the BS can switch down to during the inactive/idle periods. The obtained results in
terms of the energy savings are compared against a baseline configuration presented
in Section 8.2.
9.2.1 Proof of convergence

The convergence of the Q-learning algorithm is an important parameter to be
measured as it indicates the ability of the algorithm to identify the best possible
action in a given state and a given environment. However, it is possible to have two
or more good actions to choose from when in a particular state. In such a scenario,
we often experience face difficulties in ensuring the convergence of the Q-learning
algorithm. In this study, we consider the change in the cumulative reward obtained
during an episode as a measure of convergence. In Figure 9.13, we plot the rewards
obtained at different episodes to examine the convergence of the proposed Q-learning
algorithm. The algorithm can be said to converge for a given initial configuration
and traffic demand when the rewards accumulated during different episodes are quite
similar or comparable. However, in this scenario, it is possible to achieve slightly
different rewards during two consecutive episodes as two or more BS configurations
can efficiently serve the current traffic demand by consuming almost the same amount
of energy.
The Q-learning parameters for simulation are as follows:
58
Parameter Value
Epsilon, › 0.2
Discount factor, ‚ 0.9
Learning rate, ¸ 0.2
Number of BS antennas 64
Number of users served simultaneously 1
Simulation window 1 hour
Time during the day 12 AM
Peak traffic demand 2500 Mbps=km2
Table 9.1: Simulation parameters for proof of convergence of Q-learning
Figure 9.13: Cumulative rewards over different number of episodes
On simulating for an hour with the parameters as given in Table 9.1, we find
that the algorithm accumulates comparable rewards beyond 500 episodes, as seen in
Figure 9.13. Therefore, one can ideally obtain an optimal final configuration for a
given hour if the number of episodes and the number of iterations per episode are set
at 500 and 100 respectively. Furthermore, it was observed that by opting for a smaller
value for the learning rate between 0.1 and 0.3, we could achieve a lower variation
in the accumulated reward per episode. Hence, we opt for a learning rate of 0.2 in
the following results. However, it was found that the convergence of the algorithm
depends largely on the number of users, their distribution, the traffic demand and
the base station resources available. Hence, one should guarantee the convergence of
the algorithm under a given deployment scenario prior to using it for obtaining an
optimal configuration for a given hour.
9.2.2 Working of the resource adaptation algorithm

In this section, we look at the working of the Q-learning algorithm in adapting the
base station’s resources. As an example, to show the working of the algorithm, we
plot the variation in the activity factor and the corresponding energy consumption
of the base station when deployed in a SDU deployment area. For this result, we
59
assume a peak traffic demand of 1200 Mbps=km2 and 64T BSs to be deployed in
this area with an inter-site distance of 1500 m. In Figure 9.14, we plot the variation
in the activity factor of the BS with and without the resource adaptation algorithm
over 24 hours. The baseline configuration of the base station used for comparing the
gains obtained from the resource adaptation algorithm are as follows:
Parameter Value
Number of BS antennas 64
Number of users served simultaneously 1
Table 9.2: Baseline configuration of the base station
Figure 9.14: Daily variation in the activity factor with the implementation of the
resource adapting algorithm
In Figure 9.14, we find that the activity factor of the BS is largely dependent on
the configuration of the BS and the hourly traffic demand. The variation trend of
the BS with the baseline configuration follows the daily load profile, as in Figure 6.1.
However, by implementing the Q-learning algorithm to the adapt the resources, we
find the variation to be slightly erratic. This is because the goal of the algorithm
is not to minimize the activity factor but to find a configuration that reduces the
overall energy consumption of the base station for a given input traffic demand.
60
Figure 9.15: Variation in the configurations through the day
Furthermore, to ensure that the power spectral density (PSD) of the BS remains
constant with the adaptation of the active array size, we vary the total available
bandwidth accordingly. In other words, the active array size has an impact on the
total available bandwidth. In this case, for the baseline configuration as given in
Table 9.2, the scaled down total bandwidth for a 32T and a 16T active array sizes
are 50 MHz and 25 MHz, respectively. In Figure 9.15, we plot the variation in the
energy consumption of the base station with and without resources adaptation over
24 hours. We also indicate the final configuration that the algorithm finds most
energy-efficient for the given hour.
From Figure 9.15, it can be seen that the Q learning algorithm manages to find
an optimal configuration during 80% of a day. Furthermore, during the peak hours
of the day (from 19:00 hrs to 23:00 hrs), the algorithm finds increasing either the
spatial multiplexing factor or the bandwidth to be the most beneficial when it comes
to reducing the overall energy consumption of the BS. This can be seen in Figure
9.16, where we plot as an example, the heat-map of the most desired actions by
the algorithm at 08:00 PM. It can be seen that initially (at 50 episodes), the agent
explores different actions from varying the array size to increasing the bandwidth.
However, as we run for more episodes (1000 episodes), we find that agent mostly
opts to increase the bandwidth (action 3) or the spatial multiplexing factor (action
5). Similar plots for other periods during the day can be obtained to have a better
understanding of the actions that would result in lower energy consumption by the
BS.
61
50 episodes 100 episodes
500 episodes 1000 episodes

Figure 9.16: Heat-map showing the most preferred action in a given state for a peak
traffic demand of 975 Mbps=km2 at 08:00 PM
While adapting the BS configuration, it is possible that the algorithm can end up
choosing a configuration that would result in a higher activity factor (as seen from 3 to
8 AM in Figure 9.14) yet having a lower overall energy consumption during the same
hour, as seen in Figure 9.17. This is due to the fact that the goal of the algorithm is
to minimize the overall energy consumption of the base station and not the activity
factor. Furthermore, it should be noted that the overall energy consumption depends
on both the active and the idle mode energy consumption which includes the sleep
levels that the BS can switch down to during the idle periods. Thus, merely observing
the activity factor to estimate the reduction in the energy consumption of the base
station can be quite misleading.
62
Figure 9.17: Daily variation in the energy consumption of a base station with the
implementation of the resource adaptation algorithm
It was observed that by adapting the resources, we could achieve an additional

reduction of 16% in the overall energy consumption of the BS during the day. A
maximum reduction of 37% in the EC was observed during the period from 13:00 hrs
to 19:00 hrs of the day. It is during these hours, that a BS with a large array can
effectively make use of the ability to spatially multiplex multiple users at the same
time, as seen in the final configurations at every hour in Figure 9.15.
These results also provide an answer to the research question Q7 (a). How can
these techniques be used (independently or in combination) to improve the energy
efficiency (EE) without degrading the quality of service (QoS) experienced by the
users? Here, we observe that by combining the two techniques, i.e., sleep modes
and dynamic resource adaptation, one can gain more energy savings as compared to
the case when these techniques are used independently. However, it should be noted
that the gains obtained were measured relative to a baseline configuration making
the selection of a standard baseline configuration to be an important aspect of the
analysis. By having a standard baseline, we ensure that the gains from the resource
adaptation can be quantitatively measured and evaluated. It also answers our
research question Q7 (b). How can resource adaptation be quantitatively measured and
evaluated? For this work, the baselines configurations indicate using the maximum
array size and full bandwidth to serve the users sequentially.
63
Chapter 10
Conclusions and future work
10.1 Conclusions
In this thesis, we investigated the potential to improve the energy-efficiency of a
BS through radio resource adaptation (radio resources include the active array size,
the bandwidth, and the spatial multiplexing factor) under varying traffic load. We
introduced a novel analytical evaluation methodology based on the activity factor to
evaluate the energy performance of a BS. We also presented a novel formulation for
calculation of the activity factor. The formulation took into account the impact of
the BS resources on its activity. Later, we introduced an updated power model to
captures the variation in the power consumption of a BS with the amount of active
resources.
To reduce the energy consumption of the BS for a given input traffic demand,
we considered the variation of the 1) the array size, 2) the bandwidth, and 3) the
spatial multiplexing factor. The idea behind resource adaptation was to determine
the optimal amount of BS resources that would be needed to serve the users in the
most energy-efficient manner. As the array size, the bandwidth, and the spatial
multiplexing factor have a direct impact on the instantaneous power consumption of
the BS, we implemented a Q-learning algorithm that would then adapt these resources
by considering the possible sleep modes the BS can switch down to under the given
traffic load. The energy performance of the adaptation algorithm was evaluated by
comparing it to a corresponding baselines.
The results indicate that it is indeed possible to reduce the overall network
energy consumption through radio resource adaptation. One could further achieve a
significant reduction the energy consumption by combining radio resource adaptation
with deeper sleep levels. It was observed that by implementing deeper SMs in 64T
BSs, one could save an additional 50% more energy during low traffic demands when
compared to the scenario with no SMs. We also concluded that having the ability
to switch to deeper sleep levels can be particularly beneficial in reducing the overall
EC of the BS, especially during hours of low traffic demand. It is more important to
have deeper sleep modes implemented in a 64T BS as compared to an 4T BS due to
the greater amount of hardware components that contribute to the higher idle power
consumption of a 64T BS.
To speak of the Q-learning algorithm, we found it to be an effective and
64
CHAPTER 10. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
efficient solution to deal with the numerous possibilities in the configuration of a

BS. Furthermore, it provides an easy implementation to search over a large state-
action space and to narrow down on an optimal energy-efficient configuration for a
given hour under acceptable time. However, the challenge lies in ensuring that the
algorithm converges. The convergence was found to be dependent on various factors
like the number of users, their distribution in the cell, the traffic demand, along with
the BS resources available. If one could ensure the convergence of the algorithm,
then this solution can be a computationally inexpensive way to evaluate the overall
network energy consumption.
On the whole, by having small improvements in the aspects of hardware design,
deployment strategies, and efficient resource utilization, there exists a great potential
to reduce the energy consumption of the network while ensuring that we meet the
user requirements satisfactorily.
10.2 Future work

There are a lot of ways that this work could be expanded in the future. Some of the
possibilities are listed below:
1. Finer granularity in the variation of the traffic demands: In this work, we

assumed the traffic demand to be constant during an hour. However, in
reality the traffic demands fluctuates to a very large extent. In the future,
one could consider the traffic variation with finer granularity. The granularity
could depend upon various factors like the activation-deactivation times and
the sleep duration of various sleep modes along with the type of services that
we are interested in.
2. Coordinated BS resource optimization: In this work, we mainly focused on

the resource adaptation of a single BS. We considered the activity factor of
the interfering BSs while finding the optimal energy-efficient configuration for
the serving BS. As an extension of this work, one could look into a multi-cell
resource adaptation problem wherein two or more BSs adapt their resources in
a coordinated manner.
3. Deep Q-learning based resource adaptation algorithm: One could take a step
further and implement a deep Q-learning based resource adaptation algorithm.
Such an implementation would be more scalable in terms of the state-action
space. While it might take longer to converge on optimal weights, it could be
possible that the algorithm is more stable and adaptable under varying traffic
demands.
4. Federated learning based coordinated BS resource adaptation: In real networks,

often the traffic experience by various BSs differs due to the distribution of
the users. It is also possible that these base stations could belong to different
network operators. In such a scenario, it is often tricky to implement these
coordinated resource adaptation algorithms due to privacy concerns. However,
one could explore federated learning based algorithms to address this issue.
65
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Energy Efficiency of 5G

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DEGREE PROJECT IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING,

SECOND CYCLE, 30 CREDITS

KTH ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

S. KRISHNA GOWTAM PEESAPATI

Master in Communication Systems

Keywords— Resource adaptation, Activity factor, Power modeling, Energy-efficiency,

S. Krishna Gowtam Peesapati

4 Energy efficient networks 21

8 Evaluation environment, parameters, and assumptions 44

9 Results and discussion 47

10 Conclusions and future work 64

2.1 Contrasting features of a 5G deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

3.1 Downlink heavy slot format [4]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

6.1 Daily traffic profile [7, 8] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

7.1 Reinforcement learning [9]. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

9.1 Variation in the power consumption of the BS with the number of

3.1 Minimum and maximum number of resource blocks . . . . . . . . . . . 14

4.1 Sleep modes and their duration [10, 11, 12] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

6.1 Deployment areas [13] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

8.1 Baseline parameters for simulations considering a 4T BS to be deployed 44

9.1 Simulation parameters for proof of convergence of Q-learning . . . . . 59

APN Access Point Name

ASM Advanced Sleep Modes

CDN Content delivery network

CRS Cell-specific Reference Signal

CAPEX Capital Expenditure

DLP Daily Load Profile

DTV Daily Traffic Variation

eMBB Enhanced Mobile Broadband

ICT Information and Communication Technology

mMTC massive Machine Type Communication

OPEX Operational Expenditure

PBCH Physical Broadcast Channel

PTRS Phase Tracking Reference Signal

PSS Primary Synchronization Signal

QoE Quality of Experience

QoS Quality of Service

RAN Radio Access Networks

RAT Radio Access Technology

SSS Secondary Synchronization Signal

SVD Singular Value Decomposition

TCO Total Cost of Ownership

TDD Time Division Duplex

URLLC Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communication

The fifth-generation (5G) as an advancement in communication technology is

ML has also proved to be useful in reducing the EC in the data centers by

• The roll-out of 5G may result in an increased overall energy consumption of

• Higher energy consumption means increased operational expenditure (OPEX)

• The increased energy consumption leads to increased CO2 emissions negatively

1.2 Research questions

3. How does the daily energy-consumption of a BS vary with the amount of

4. With BSs/products having different abilities available in the market; can we

5. Can we really save energy by changing the BSs configuration/resources when

7. How can these dependencies be modelled flexibly and implemented to accu-

(a) How can these techniques be used (independently or in combination) to

1. Traffic demand modelling (and prediction)

2. Network dimensioning for different geographical regions

4. Design a traffic-load dependent BS resource adaptation algorithm

(a) Modeling a representative RL algorithm that identifies the most energy

(b) Maximize the sleep duration achieved by opting for a EE configuration

1.6 Structure of the thesis

2.1 How different is 5G from the previous generations?

1. Higher frequencies of operation: 5G will start to make use of higher frequencies

2. Smaller cells: Higher operating frequencies leads to higher attenuation in the