Do you know how much power 5G actually consumes?

5G is one of the hottest topics at the moment, and 5G power consumption is the hottest topic. In order to win the favor of operators, various manufacturers are touting their products' power consumption performance as the industry leader. Whose statement is accurate? To get to the bottom of the issue from the various opinions, two questions must be answered: first, what is the power consumption of 5G base stations related to? Second, how to accurately evaluate the power consumption of 5G base stations.

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

First of all, the power consumption of base stations mainly comes from the radio frequency unit, and the power amplifier accounts for the highest proportion of power consumption in the radio frequency unit. The power amplifier can linearly amplify input signals within a certain range, while input signals exceeding this range will be distorted and amplified, resulting in reduced power amplifier efficiency. In order to improve the efficiency of the power amplifier, the nonlinear amplification area of ​​the power amplifier is pre-corrected through a specially optimized digital pre-correction algorithm (DPD), which can greatly improve the efficiency of the power amplifier. It is not difficult to see that the quality of the DPD algorithm will directly affect the power consumption efficiency of 5G base stations.

Secondly, the power consumption of base stations is also closely related to the 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 consumes a lot of power consumption, and there is a lot of room for optimization in this part. Generally, for mature commercial products, industry manufacturers will consider using application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips to replace field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chips to reduce power consumption and improve computing efficiency.

As for the second question, how to accurately evaluate the power consumption of 5G base stations? The key point is to unify the test conditions. Because the power consumption of 5G base stations is related to multiple test factors, the change of any factor will lead to a large change in the results. So, what test factors are 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 efficiency as an example, reducing the transmit power by 40W will reduce the power consumption by 200W.
2. Service load: The higher the service load of a base station, the more physical resources (PRBs) are used, and the greater the power consumption. For example, the power consumption of a base station with a service load of 100% is much greater than the power consumption of a base station with a service load of 30%.
3. Ambient temperature: Increased ambient temperature will cause the base station operating temperature to increase. As mentioned above, increased operating temperature will increase the leakage current of the device, which in turn will increase the power consumption of the base station.
4. Supported functions: Different functions supported by base stations will also lead to differences in base station power consumption. For example, if the manufacturer considers the subsequent expansion capabilities of the base station and makes provisions for power supply, heat dissipation, and computing power, then the power consumption will definitely increase compared to base stations without expansion capabilities.

In fact, the competition among manufacturers for the best 5G power consumption will naturally be settled during the centralized procurement test. In order to ensure that the centralized procurement test results are fair and credible, the operator group company will gather a large number of senior experts, adopt strict environmental and platform review standards, and use multi-sample and multi-use case tests to test the most realistic level of power consumption of base stations of various manufacturers. This will not only help operators make correct judgments, but will also encourage manufacturers to continue to innovate, thereby promoting the positive development of the 5G industry.