Increasing the density of 5G masts could slash a mobile network鈥檚 overall energy use by two-thirds and greatly extend the battery life of all phones, researchers have found.
Mobile phone signals are broadcast from towers in all directions, so much of the energy is wasted due to absorption, reflection and scattering. and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, say that cutting the distance of wireless transmissions is key as it would mean each cell tower could be smaller and use less power.
The researchers used open-source software to simulate transmissions from base stations to mobile phones and tested various configurations of networks on 3D models of real cities from OpenStreetMap. Their aim was to maintain good coverage while also minimising energy use.
Advertisement
Gupta says increasing the number of masts was proposed in the 4G era but that technology couldn鈥檛 seamlessly switch a moving user鈥檚 phone from tower to tower fast enough 鈥� something that would be required more often in a denser network. This has now been addressed with 5G technology, he says. 鈥淭hat allows for mushrooming growth of base stations to make things more energy efficient.鈥�
鈥淚f you do this, there are significant improvements and efficiencies,鈥� says Gupta. 鈥淵our [phone] battery lifetime could be 50 per cent more. So if your battery was lasting 12 hours, it will last 18 hours now, because of this network.鈥�
The sweet spot occurs when base stations are, on average, five times closer to mobile phones than today 鈥� something that would require thousands of extra towers to be built across the UK. Gupta says the bureaucracy of finding and getting approval for new locations is still a hurdle, as is cost. However, he says that lower energy use would bring savings that could cover 鈥� or at least offset 鈥� additional costs.
The research also revealed that densification would allow base stations to be dramatically shrunk, to as little as 15 metres in height, as they would no longer need to be tall enough to allow signals to pass over obstacles. This would reduce construction costs and complexity.
arXiv
