Ge Xiaohu, Yang Jing, Gharavi Hamid, Sun Yang
IEEE Commun Mag. 2017 May;55(5):184-191. doi: 10.1109/MCOM.2017.1600788. Epub 2017 May 12.
The deployment of a large number of small cells poses new challenges to energy efficiency, which has often been ignored in fifth generation (5G) cellular networks. While massive multiple-input multiple outputs (MIMO) will reduce the transmission power at the expense of higher computational cost, the question remains as to which computation or transmission power is more important in the energy efficiency of 5G small cell networks. Thus, the main objective in this paper is to investigate the computation power based on the Landauer principle. Simulation results reveal that more than 50% of the energy is consumed by the computation power at 5G small cell base stations (BSs). Moreover, the computation power of 5G small cell BS can approach 800 watt when the massive MIMO (e.g., 128 antennas) is deployed to transmit high volume traffic. This clearly indicates that computation power optimization can play a major role in the energy efficiency of small cell networks.
大量小基站的部署给能源效率带来了新的挑战，而这在第五代（5G）蜂窝网络中常常被忽视。虽然大规模多输入多输出（MIMO）将以更高的计算成本为代价降低传输功率，但在5G小基站网络的能源效率方面，究竟哪种计算功率或传输功率更重要仍是个问题。因此，本文的主要目标是基于兰道尔原理研究计算功率。仿真结果表明，在5G小基站中，超过50%的能量被计算功率消耗。此外，当部署大规模MIMO（如128根天线）来传输大量流量时，5G小基站的计算功率可接近800瓦。这清楚地表明，计算功率优化在小基站网络的能源效率方面可以发挥重要作用。
