Do You Know the Actual 5G Power Consumption?

5G is one of the hottest topics at the moment. But 5G power consumption is a hot topic as well. In order to win the favor of operators, all manufacturers are flaunting the industry’s leading power consumption performance. Who is accurate? To answer this question, we should take a look at a few factors. First, what is the correlation between 5G base station power consumption? Second, how to assess the 5G base station power consumption?

Correlation between 5G base station power consumption

Regarding the answer to the first question, we can find some clues from the core methods of reducing the power consumption of 5G base stations introduced by various manufacturers at MWC2019 Shanghai Exhibition.

1. The base station power consumption mainly comes from the RF unit. The highest power consumption ratio in the RF unit is the power amplifier. The amplifier can linearly amplify the input signal within a certain range. The input signal exceeding this range will be amplified by distortion, resulting in a decrease in power amplifier efficiency. In order to improve the efficiency of the power amplifier, the digital amplifier pre-distortion algorithm (DPD) is optimized to pre-correct the nonlinear amplification area of ​​the power amplifier, which can greatly improve the power amplifier efficiency. It is not difficult to see that the pros and cons of the DPD algorithm will directly affect the power efficiency of the 5G base station.
2. The base station power consumption is also closely related to operating temperature. Generally, the higher the operating temperature, the greater the leakage current of the device and the greater the power consumption of the base station. By introducing advanced heat dissipation technology, the base station can be effectively controlled to operate within a reasonable temperature range to ensure the power consumption efficiency of the base station.

In addition, the data processing part of the base station also occupies more power consumption overhead, and this part also has a large optimization space. In general, the manufacturers will consider the use of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips instead of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips for mature commercial products to reduce power consumption and improve computing efficiency.

How to assess the 5G base station power drainage?

As for the second question, the key point is the unification of test conditions. Because the power consumption of a 5G base station is related to multiple test factors, any change in factors will result in a large change in the overall results. So, what are the test factors related to the power consumption of 5G base stations?

1. Transmit power: The lower the transmit power, the lower the base station power consumption. Taking 20% ​​power consumption efficiency as an example, reducing the transmit power of 40W will reduce the power consumption by 200W.
2. Service load: The higher the traffic load of the base station, the more physical resources (PRBs) are called and the greater the power consumption. For example, when the traffic load is 100%, the base station power consumption is much larger than the base station power consumption when the traffic load is 30%.
3. Ambient temperature: The increase in ambient temperature will cause the base station to increase in operating temperature. As mentioned above, the increase in operating temperature leads to an increase in leakage current of the device, which in turn leads to an increase in power consumption of the base station.
4. Support function: The functions supported by the base station are different, which may also cause differences in base station power consumption. For example, if the vendor considers the subsequent expansion capabilities of the base station, it reserves the power, cooling, and computing capabilities. Then, compared with the base station without expansion capability, the power consumption will certainly increase.

In fact, the optimal battle for manufacturers’ 5G power consumption will naturally be conclusive in the collection test. In order to ensure that the results of the collection test are fair and credible, the operators will gather a large number of senior experts, adopt strict environmental and platform review standards, and test the power consumption of the base stations of each manufacturer with the test of multi-sample and multi-use cases. This will not only help operators to make correct judgments but also encourage manufacturers to continue to innovate, thus promoting the positive development of the 5G industry.

Via