Energy Consumption of 5G, Wireless Systems and the Digital
“A 5G base station is generally expected to consume roughly three times as much power as a 4G base station. And more 5G base stations are needed to cover the same area,” -IEEE
However, Li says 5G base stations are carrying five times the traffic as when equipped with only 4G, pushing up power consumption. The carrier is seeking subsidies from the Chinese government to help with the increased energy usage.
“A 5G base station is generally expected to consume roughly three times as much power as a 4G base station. And more 5G base stations are needed to cover the same area,” -IEEE Spectrum, 5G's Waveform Is a Battery Vampire
Although the absolute value of the power consumption of 5G base stations is increasing, their energy efficiency ratio is much lower than that of 4G stations. In other words, with the same power consumption, the network capacity of 5G will be as dozens of times larger than 4G, so the power consumption per bit is sharply reduced.
However, this technological leap comes with a substantial increase in energy consumption. Compared to its predecessor, the fourth-generation (4G) network, the energy consumption of the 5G network is approximately three times higher .
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