5G ushers in aggressive growth in energy consumption

 “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,” IEEE Spectrum wrote in 2018.

Why? Because, as Environmental Health Trust noted, there will be an increase in the number of small cells, massive multiple-input multiple-output (“MIMO”) antennas, cloud computing and an explosion of internet-connected devices.

One 5G base station is estimated to consume about as much power as 73 households. Three years ago, it was estimated that by 2025 5G would consume more than 20% of the world’s energy.

5G is in the millimetre wave bands – 24-86 GHz. This slice of radio spectrum can carry large amounts of data, but not nearly as far as the current mobile network at frequencies from 700 megahertz to 6 gigahertz. What this means is that for 5G, a lot more equipment needs to be installed and potentially more data needs to be processed.

Additionally, it is important to note that millimetre wave communications are prone to interference. For example, radio at above 20 GHz doesn’t go through walls well. It doesn’t go through leaves well. It doesn’t play nicely with rain. What does this mean? Many, many more antennas.

Measuring networking power consumption requires the capacity to determine how much energy wired and wireless networks consume.

“A general concern is that higher data rates can only be achieved by consuming more energy; if the EE [energy efficiency] is constant, then 100× higher data rate in 5G is associated with a 100× higher energy consumption.” This is where headlines like, “Tsunami of data could consume 1/5 of global data by 2025,” come from.

In addition to transmitting or harvesting data, energy can also be moved in 5G networks. With 5G, one of the novel technologies being considered is Radio Frequency (RF) harvesting; converting energy in transmitted radio waves to user devices or even wireless infrastructure (microcells, antenna arrays, etc.). Since RF signals can carry both energy and information, theoretically RF energy harvesting and information reception can be performed from the same RF input signal. This scheme is referred to as the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). The hardware to support this doesn’t exist yet, but it has promise....<<<Read More>>>...