“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
Furthermore, the base stations dominate the energy consumption of the radio access network. Therefore, it is reasonable to focus on the power consumption of the base stations first, while other aspects such as virtualization of compute in the 5G core or the energy consumption of user equipment should be considered at a later stage.
This restricts the potential use of the power models, as their validity and accuracy remain unclear. Future work includes the further development of the power consumption models to form a unified evaluation framework that enables the quantification and optimization of energy consumption and energy efficiency of 5G networks.
“A lurking threat behind the promise of 5G delivering up to 1,000 times as much data as today's networks is that 5G could also consume up to 1,000 times as much energy,” Dexter Johnson in the IEEE Spectrum. Why?
China plans to construct over 4.5 million 5G base stations in 2025 while introducing additional policy and financial incentives to support industries expected to shape the next decade, the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced during its annual work conference.
Previous research has estimated that a single 5G base station will produce approximately 30.2 ~ 33.5 tCO 2 eq throughout its life cycle (Ding et al., 2022; Guo et al., 2022a). Consequently, the carbon emissions from 5G base stations in China in 2021 amounted to approximately 49.2 MtCO 2 eq.
5G base stations are categorized into micro base stations, macro base stations, and indoor sub-systems based on their transmit power and coverage. As 5G operates at a higher frequency than 4G, its coverage capability is lower and the signal penetration is poor, causing significant signal attenuation.
In terms of energy consumption, 5G base stations require continuous operation and stability, which leads to significant electricity consumption (Guo et al., 2022a). This power is mainly supplied by transmission equipment and auxiliary equipment, such as transformers, UPS power supplies, and cooling equipment.
Back in the day, when Telephony equipment was being developed, 48 was the chosen system voltage because it's considered safe “low voltage”, and reduced amperage requirement of equipment powered at this voltage.
Products basically use -48V power supply system, and the actual measured voltage is generally –53.5V. This is because for reliability reasons, communication equipment is equipped with a backup battery (-48V). In order to ensure reliable charging of the battery, the supply voltage needs to be slightly higher than the battery voltage.
For -48V system equipment, the required operating voltage range is -38.4V ~ 57.6V, but in fact we generally require the operating range -36V ~ -72V. The main consideration is that -48V system equipment must be compatible with –60V power supply system, which requires –48~-72V.
In fact, -48VDC allows telecom operators to use 12-volt lead-acid batteries wired in series to act as a backup power source in the event of a power failure. Negative 48VDC (-48V), or positive grounded, was selected for use by Bell when it was found to be superior to positive voltage.
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