Energy consumption in 5g systems
– challenges and solutions
Florin Paulescu
Department of Communications
Politehnica University Timisoara
Timisoara, Romania
florin.paulescu@student.upt.ro
Abstract— With the introduction of 5G networks in our
lives, we are faced with the challenge to lower energy
consumption, which is expected to increase significantly. As a
result, it is necessary to develop solutions to improve energy
efficiency while maintaining performance. This paper
introduces the basic energy-saving technology of 5G networks
Keywords—5G, technology, energy, efficiency, optimization
I. INTRODUCTION
Acording to authors of [11] the mobile telephony is the
product of telecommunication engineering which started at
the end of 19th century.
Cellular networks were originally designed for voice only
application, using analogue transmission channels.
When digital technology evolved and more voice
channels were required, digital 2G systems emerged in the
1990s. Digital transmission enabled new services such as text
messaging and circuit switched data access.
The low data rate services provided by 2G systems did
not fulfill the need for mobile Internet access. This lead to a
demand for new 3G standards, which evolved to provide fast
data services and more capacity for voice. The recent (4G)
mobile communications system LTE was developed to
provide high capacity and highest rate data service for mobile
multimedia. Seen from a historical point of view, each of the
cellular standards has evolved around a set of key use cases
presented in Figure 1:
Figure 1: 5G: symbiotic integration of existing and new
technologies (“5G use cases and requirements,” Nokia
According to [3,6], 5G subscriptions in 2020 were
forecasted at 220 million, while by the end of 2026 they
predict 3.5 billion 5G subscriptions, making around 40% of
all mobile subscriptions.
XXX-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/XX/$XX.00 ©20XX IEEE
Gheorghița Daniela Năchescu
Department of Communications
Politehnica University Timisoara
Timisoara, Romania
gheorghita.nachescu@student.upt.ro
Figure 2: 5G Demands - Higher capacity, lowest
latency and more consistent experience
5G comes with new requirements for saving energy: 5G
communication modules to be optimized for low-energy
consumption in idle modes. Energy management protocols
at 5G base station levels to optimize energy consumption
based on real traffic. Efficient cooling technologies and
alternative power sources to reduce environmental impact.
Defining standards for machine-to-machine (M2M)
communications that allow devices to communicate
efficiently while minimizing energy consumption.
5G Use Cases for Energy Saving: Smart Grids and
Energy Management by Using 5G networks to facilitate fast
and efficient communications within smart energy
distribution networks. Intelligent Transportation by
Developing 5G networks to support vehicle-to-vehicle
(V2V) and vehicle-to infrastructure (V2I) communications
to improve traffic flow and avoid congestion. Smart
Buildings, Agriculture and Industry: Integrating 5G
networks for the efficient connection and management of
devices in smart buildings and automation control for
optimizing energy usage.
This paper is organized as follows:
a) Section 2 discuss about reduced power consumption
from User Equipament and GnodeB.
b) Section 3 presents Sleep Modes.
c) Section 4 discuss power saving algorithms.
d) Section 5 provides the conclusion of the paper.
 II. UE & GNODEB POWER CONSUMPTION
The traffic of cellular network has great non-uniformity
and volatility in space and time, which brings opportunities
and challenges to the planning and management of cellular
network.
The authors in [4] have surveyed the efforts of different
academic and industry projects on energy efficiency,
emphasizing how to make use of daily network traffic
variations to save energy at the RAN level.
In particular, the RAN accounts for about 73% of the
total power usage of a typical cellular network.
In this regard, some studies examined reducing the BS
transmit power, others concentrated on the hardware’s
efficiency, and many others considered the concept of
deactivating the BSs, putting them into sleep mode,
whenever it is feasible.
A. UE battery consumption
As the authors of [10] say, the smartphone receives the
required energy, to run itself, from the battery within it.
Typically, a rechargeable battery is used for this purpose,
which may be implanted within the device or may be
detachable. The battery needs to be recharged periodically
and most often in quick succession We need to understand
the energy consumption patterns in a smartphone and
optimize and regulate its architecture and usage accordingly.
A mobile device is architected in a way that it is
constantly connected to a cellular network.Therefore, the
power dissipation in a smartphone is highly dependent on
the quality of the signal being received by the device at a
particular location. Weak signal strength leads to an increase
in power consumption of the Tx/Rx module, causing high
energy drainage.
Optimizing energy consumption in User Equipment (UE)
is crucial for extending battery life, improving device
efficiency, and promoting overall sustainability in 5G
systems.
Authors in [10] presents several strategies and techniques
employed to achieve energy savings on UEs:
1) Idle Mode Optimization: Implementing techniques to
optimize power usage during idle periods is crucial. UEs can
periodically enter low-power states and reduce the
frequency of background processes to extend battery life
when the device is not actively in use.
2) Adaptive Modulation and Coding: UEs can
dynamically adjust modulation and coding schemes based
on the quality of the wireless channel.
3) Low-Power States and Doze Mode: UEs can enter
low-power states or doze mode during periods of inactivity.
This involves shutting down or reducing power to certain
components while maintaining essential functions, allowing
for energy savings.
4) Background Task Optimization: Managing
background tasks and services efficiently helps prevent
unnecessary power consumption.
5) Battery-Aware User Interfaces: Providing users with
information about the impact of different settings on battery
life encourages energy-conscious usage.
6) Dynamic Network Selection: UEs can dynamically
select and switch between different network types (e.g., 5G,
LTE, Wi-Fi) based on factors such as signal strength, data
rates, and power consumption. This ensures the UE is
connected to the most energy-efficient network available.
B. GnodeB power consumption
The authors of [4] highlight that BSs consume about
60% to 80% of the energy used in cellular networks.
The BSs have two power consumption components:
node power consumption and communication power
consumption. The node power consumption includes the
power consumption of signal processing, cooling, and
backup batteries. Communication power includes the power
consumption to transmit a signal with a certain coverage,
which depends on the distance of each UE: a distant UE
consumes more energy in data transmission than a closer
one.
Some specific strategies and techniques employed to
achieve energy savings on gNodeBs presented by authors of
[2,6,7,9 ]:
1) Sleep Mode
2) Cell Densification and Small Cells
3) Massive MIMO
4) Energy-Efficient Hardware
5) Advanced Cooling Systems
6) Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning: improve
efficiency and lengthen sleep periods, realize intelligent
collaboration of 5G network, continuous optimization of
radio resource scheduling and improvement of user
experience.
7) Hybrid Power Solutions: Integrating hybrid power
solutions, such as combining grid power with renewable
energy sources (solar, wind), can help gNodeBs operate
more sustainably. This is particularly relevant in off-grid or
remote locations.
8) Network Slicing: Implementing network slicing
allows operators to allocate resources more efficiently by
tailoring network slices to specific services or applications.
This helps in optimizing the use of gNodeB resources and
reducing unnecessary energy consumption.
9) D2D technology: brings the largest gains in macro
cells, up to 70% energy reductions. Small cells are already
more energy efficient, but energy savings can still be
significant, even 40% in the case of femto cells.
III. SLEEP MODES
Implementing sleep modes during periods of low traffic
helps reduce power consumption. Certain components of the
gNodeB, such as radio transceivers, can be put into a low-
power state when not actively serving users.
 The sleep mode strategy presented by the authors of [4]
assumes the deactivation/activation of the BS hardware
components. These components can be grouped by similar
deactivation/activation time and assigned to different sleep
mode levels: As stated in [5], the following sleep mode
levels can be assumed:
a) Sleep Mode (SM)1 level: the power amplifier and
some processing components of the digital baseband and
analogue front-end are disabled. This is the fastest level with
0.071 ms of (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
(OFDM) symbol) deactivation/activation time. Selection:
Highlight all author and affiliation lines.
b) SM2 level: needs 1 ms (1 sub-frame of Transmission
Time Interval (TTI)) to deactivate/activate additional
c) SM3 level: the power amplifier, all the components
of the digital baseband, and almost all the parts of the
analogue front-end (except the clock generator) are switched
off. The deactivation/activation time is 10 ms
d) SM4 level: is the standby mode where a large part of
the components of BS is deactivated. The wake-up
functionality will take 1s, as this is the minimal sleep
duration.
As the system enters a deeper sleep mode, less energy is
consumed, however, the transition latency to activate the BS
takes longer, which degrades the end user QoS.
Different sets of hardware can be grouped by sleep mode,
being an example, table 1 presents the power consumption
measurements for 4 different types of BSs where the authors
have grouped the power consumption and transition times by
sleep mode.
BB
TABLE 1. Base station power consumption by base station type as
defined in [5].
IV. POWER SAVING ALGORITHMS
The authors of [1, 2,4,5,6,7,8] presented the Q-learning,
Cell Zooming, Machine and Reinforcement Learning
algorithms that address the software and hardware energy
saving.
For software energy saving, it is based on the software to
schedule base station resource according to the service load
to keep the base station to run effectively.
A. Q-learning
The authors of [2] point out the importance of using Q-
learning to understand the request likelihood and the
statistics of random arrival and departure of mobile users
because we don’t know the probabilities that the users would
request the files.
A strategy based on Q-learning in combination with
logarithmic cooling (LC) is proposed to optimize the
connection of user equipment (UE) with a base station or
access point (AP) to address energy efficiency issues of
device-to-device (D2D) communications in heterogeneous
networks
B. Predictive Analytics and Machine Learning
Leveraging machine learning algorithms and predictive
analytics can help forecast traffic patterns and dynamically
adjust gNodeB parameters to optimize energy consumption.
This proactive approach contributes to efficient resource
According to the authors of [4,7] Using machine
learning algorithms it is possible to predict the category of
small cells, specifically and make the decision whether to set
cells to sleep or to gradually deactivate or activate
components of BSs and decrease BS energy consumption.
Reinforcement Learning: a subset of machine learning,
an agent that learns using a trial-and-error approach to map
situations into actions. A reward or penalty is received after
each action, allowing action-based learning to improve. Is
used to enable a scheduling solution for data traffic
management. The scheduling framework allows different
scheduling rules to be selected as the RL agent maps the
rules to each state and learns when to apply each. This
framework allows minimizing packet delays and packet
drop rates for strict QoS requirement applications.
C. Cell zooming algorithm: is traditional based on load
concentration algorithm. algorithm based
It’s more efficient when it’s based on load balancing
algorithm, can improve EE in a heterogeneous cellular
network. The system model used is a heterogeneous cellular
network which includes one macro BS (CBS) and many
small BSs (SBS). The CBS only provides coverage and the
SBSs dynamically adjust transmit power to achieve cell
zooming. The core of our LB algorithm is to move the
traffic from the heavily loaded SBSs to the less loaded
SBSs.
Power Consumption algorithms enable mobile devices to
consume far less energy while maintaining high connection
speeds. However, by reducing the amount of energy required
for communication, these algorithms can significantly extend
device battery life. By optimizing Internet connection speeds,
users can also consistently experience faster web downloads
and fewer macro outages.
V. CONCLUSIONS
Contribution: In this paper, we make an overview about
energy-saving strategies: a review of research papers,
addressing different challenges of energy consumption in 5G
networks and a base analysis of the various entities and
factors that are responsible for the majority amount of the
total power consumption in a smartphone and in a gNodeB.
 In summary, the success of 5G systems relies on the
effective implementation of these optimization and energy-
saving strategies. Collaboration among network operators,
equipment manufacturers, and regulatory bodies is crucial to
advancing these strategies, reducing the environmental
impact of telecommunications, and ensuring the long-term
sustainability of 5G networks.
By combining these strategies, device manufacturers and
software developers can contribute to the overall energy
efficiency of 5G systems by ensuring that UEs operate in an
optimized and sustainable manner.
The advancement and popularity of smartphones have
made it an essential and all-purpose device. But lack of
advancement in battery technology has held back its
optimum potential. Therefore, considering its scarcity,
optimal use and efficient management of energy are crucial
in a smartphone. For that, a fair understanding of a
smartphone’s energy consumption factors is necessary for
both users and device manufacturers.
REFERENCES
[1] S. Malta, P. Pinto and M. Fernández-Veiga, "Using Reinforcement
Learning to Reduce Energy Consumption of Ultra-Dense Networks
With 5G Use Cases Requirements," in IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp.
5417-5428, 2023
[2] A. Aggarwal and D. Selvamuthu, "Energy Optimization of a Base
Station using Q-learning Algorithm," 2023 17th International
Conference on Telecommunications (ConTEL), Graz, Austria, 2023,
pp. 1-5.
[3] Allayiotis. F, Bouras. C, Kokkinos. V, ”Α Machine Learning
Mechanism for improved Energy Consumption in 5G Small Cells, “
in IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications, Rhodes,
Greece, 2022
[4] S. Malta, P. Pinto and M. Fernández-Veiga, "Using Reinforcement
Learning to Reduce Energy Consumption of Ultra-Dense Networks
With 5G Use Cases Requirements," in IEEE Access, vol. 11, pp.
5417-5428, 2023.
[5] B. Debaillie, C. Desset, and F. Louagie, ‘‘A flexible and future-proof
power model for cellular base stations,’’ in Proc. IEEE 81st Veh.
Technol. Conf.(VTC Spring), May 2015, pp. 1–7.
[6] Z. Zhang, F. Liu and Z. Zeng, "The cell zooming algorithm for energy
efficiency optimization in heterogeneous cellular network," 2017 9th
International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal
Processing (WCSP), Nanjing, China, 2017, pp. 1-5.
[7] T. Rumeng, W. Tong, S. Ying and H. Yanpu, "Intelligent Energy
Saving Solution of 5G Base Station Based on Artificial Intelligence
Technologies," 2021 IEEE International Joint EMC/SI/PI and EMC
Europe Symposium, Raleigh, NC, USA, 2021, pp. 739-742.
[8] M. S. Khalaf, A. A. A. Wahab, H. A. Al-Wzwazy, A. S. Al-Khaleefa,
M. Almohamadi and A. M. Dakhil, "Review of Beamforming’s
Energy Consumption Algorithms for (5G) Wireless Networks," 2023
Al-Sadiq International Conference on Communication and
Information Technology (AICCIT), Al-Muthana, Iraq, 2023, pp. 288-
291.
[9] Höyhtyä, Marko, Olli Apilo and Mika Lasanen. “Review of Latest
Advances in 3GPP Standardization: D2D Communication in 5G
Systems and Its Energy Consumption Models.” 2018 Future Internet
no. 1: 3.
[10] P. K. D. Pramanik et al., "Power Consumption Analysis,
Measurement, Management, and Issues: A State-of-the-Art Review of
Smartphone Battery and Energy Usage," in IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp.
182113-182172, 2019.
[11] Nokia Oyj, Karaportti “ 5G use cases and requirements,” in Nokia.com,
2016.