End-to-end power estimation for heterogeneous cellular LTE SoCs in early design phases

Abstract

System-level power modeling and estimation is a non-trivial task for the architecture and power management strategies exploration during early design phases of a cellular LTE modem. It requires system architects to consider not only highly heterogeneous SoC architectures, but also various worldwide LTE network configurations and dynamic scheduling which impact modem power consumption significantly. In this work, we present an LTE end-to-end power model to enable a fast power consumption evaluation of different LTE modem system architecture options. The power model for digital elements is based on power states and refined by execution phases. For analogue/RF elements, the model is differentiated by each operational state consuming a constant power. The LTE power amplifier, as a major power contributor, is modeled at a detailed abstraction level using piece-wise polynomial equations with the consideration of band-to-band variations and the envelope tracking operation. Using this heterogeneous power modeling approach, different system design choices can be compared and explored holistically at a rather low modeling effort and a fast simulation speed. Moreover, the power estimation of the LTE modem takes into account the impact of real-life networks, which enables the easy adaptation to various network scenarios in early design phases. Thanks to this configurable end-to-end model, the productivity of a power modeling team can be improved by 10× to meet the challenge of increased exploration space in LTE modem concept design under tight time-to-market requirements.