Cost-efficient microgeneration renewable energy provision dimensioning for sustainable 5G heterogeneous network

Abstract

The deployment of mobile networks has imposed an urgent requirement for the pursuit of low-carbon communication infrastructures. The increasing energy consumption of mobile networks has brought about challenges of techno-economic and environmental sustainability. Renewable energy-enabled mobile networks have received a lot of attention due to their capability to evade greenhouse gas emissions and easy availability. Microgeneration-based renewable energy provision is a feasible and effective solution for 5G networks. Dimensioning of microgeneration renewable energy power supply is an essential issue to make the system operate for a long period cost-effectively with a minimum amount of grid energy consumption. For effective deployment of microgeneration renewable energy system, it is essential to provision it with adequate PV panel capacity and storage devices. This work attempts to identify the cost-effective, energy-efficient, and emissions-aware sizing of PV panels and storage for 5G HetNet. An energy-saving strategy based on an optimal policy of advanced sleep modes and traffic-aware load offloading is developed and the interaction of the energy-saving strategy on the system dimensioning is explicitly examined. The proposed solution aims to ensure the communication quality of service whilst keeping the optimal cost-effective deployment and network operation. The system performance in terms of grid energy consumption, empty storage probability, emission performance, and total cost of the system is extensively assessed through experiments for a range of operational scenarios. The numerical results demonstrated that the proposed sustainable energy system dimensioning and operation integrated with an energy-saving strategy is energy-efficient and cost-effective.