| Project Detail |
Reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a worldwide priority and one of the Horizon Europe Missions. Smart cities, e-banking, industrial automation, and the Internet of Things (IoT) – together with other multiple services enabled by mobile communications – contributed to reduce around 2,135 million tonnes of GHG emissions in 2018, giving raise to the so-called enabling effect of mobile technologies. 5G and 6G are expected to even increase this effect by delivering an unprecedented fabric of massive connectivity to millions of users and interconnected devices. Paradoxically, despite being more efficient in terms of transmitted bits per joule, a 5G cell could consume up to 140% more energy than a 4G one for covering the same area, mainly due to the use of massive antenna arrays, higher frequency bands and high base station (BS) density. With 73% of the total energy consumed in the radio access network, designing more efficient BS hardware and an energy-aware network design arise as mandatory directions. In this project, an energy efficient design of 5G and 6G networks will be addressed. First, the use of the recently proposed dynamic metasurface antennas (DMAs) will be explored as alternative to conventional arrays, characterising the energy savings provided by these structures. Second, intra-cell (turning off parts of the DMA at the BS) and inter-cell (switching off entire BSs) sleep modes algorithms will be designed for low load periods of time, accounting for the interaction between them while meeting quality of service constraints. Finally, the proposed solutions will be validated, and the benefits with respect to conventional and state-of-the-art approaches. |
