Power consumption model for macrocell and microcell base stations

In this paper, a power consumption model for both macrocell and microcell base stations is proposed. This model is validated by temporal power measurements on actual base stations and an excellent agreement is obtained. Furthermore, the power consumption’s evolution during the day is investigated by means of these measurements. The energy efficiency of three different wireless technologies is compared namely mobile WiMAX, LTE, and HSPA. Based on the model proposed, the deployment tool GRAND (Green Radio Access Network Design) is implemented which allows to design an energyefficient access network for a predefined area. In general and based on the assumptions made, a macrocell base station consumes about 4.4 times more than a microcell base station. However, a microcell base station is less energy-efficient than a macrocell base station due to its lower coverage range. Despite this, it is still useful to introduce them in the network as the same coverage can be obtained with a lower total power consumption than with a network where only macrocell base stations are used.