Improvement of energy efficiency by dynamic load consolidation in C‐RAN

Abstract

SummaryThe Fifth Generation (5G) network is the next step in the evolution of cellular networks, which are anticipated to encounter a remarkable growth in traffic. To meet this traffic requirement, the network capacity must be increased, which would inevitably necessitate the expansion of additional base stations (BSs). Moreover, the expenses and energy consumption of BSs are excessively high. The highly complex signal processing in baseband units contributes to a substantial amount of energy consumption. Consequently, cloud radio access network (C‐RAN) has been demonstrated as an effective approach to overcoming 5G wireless challenges through an energy‐efficient means. C‐RAN architecture has a baseband unit (BBU) pool that consists of the number of BBUs and remote sites, which are called remote radio heads (RRHs). As a sharing of ancillary subsystems into one location, BBU pooling has a significant impact on reducing power consumption. However, C‐RAN necessitates a novel paradigm of energy consumption for resource optimization. In this article, a C‐RAN with a dynamic load consolidation algorithm depending on traffic condition is presented to jointly take the power consumption and energy efficiency targeting to decrease power consumption and increase energy efficiency. To capture the energy consumption of C‐RAN, a new energy consumption scheme considering the BBU cloud, optical link, and radio side power has been proposed that optimizes the BBU resources. Numerical results come about based on simulation settings illustrate that the presented model accomplishes an improved energy‐efficient performance with respect to the referred baseline RAN system scheme.