The mobile industry through the NGMN Alliance′s (NGMN) Green Future Networks Programme has come together to find solutions to increase network energy efficiency and enable operators to reduce their electricity consumption. In this publication we outline and prioritise the various options available to increase network energy efficiency. In particular energy saving approaches are organised into three broad categories (and time-horizons):
• (short-term) process optimisations (chapter 2)
• (medium-term) engineering optimisations (chapter 3)
• (long-term) new technologies (chapter 4)
For each energy saving approach information is provided – based on data from live networks and/or simulations – on the size and scope of the potential energy savings.
The publication builds on NGMN’s first Network Energy Efficiency report which reviewed where energy is consumed in a typical mobile network and highlighted opportunities and challenges for the industry to improve network energy efficiency [1]. As identified in that first NGMN report, the vast majority of electricity consumption (almost three-quarters of all energy consumed) is in the mobile sites. For this reason, many of the solutions proposed seek to – as a priority – minimise energy consumption in the RAN. However, energy consumption in the operators’ data centres is also addressed in relation to issues such as cooling technologies and the move towards virtualised and cloud-native
network elements