From Self-Sustainable Green Mobile Networks to Enhanced Interaction with the Smart Grid

Abstract

Due to the staggering increase of mobile traffic, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are facing considerable operational cost due to power supply. Renewable Energy (RE) sources to power Base Stations (BSs) represent a promising solution to lower the energy bill, but their intermittent nature may affect the service continuity and the system self-sufficiency. Furthermore, in the new energy market dominated by the Smart Grid, new potentialities arise for MNOs in a Demand Response (DR) framework, since they can dynamically modulate the mobile network energy demand in accordance with SG requests, thus obtaining significant rewards. This work proposes various stochastic models to reliably and accurately characterize the RE production and the operation of a green mobile network, also analyzing the impact of parameter quantization on the model performance. The RE system dimensioning is investigated, trading off cost saving and feasibility constraints, and evaluating the impact of Resource on Demand (RoD) strategies, that allow to achieve more than 40% cost reduction. Finally, by exploiting RoD and WiFi offloading techniques, various energy management policies are designed to enhance the interaction of a green mobile network with the SG in a DR framework, leading to fully erase the energy bill and even gain positive revenues.