Power consumption of 5G base stations in Norway

How much power does a 5G station use?

The power consumption of a single 5G station is 2.5 to 3.5 times higher than that of a single 4G station. The main factor behind this increase in 5G power consumption is the high power usage of the active antenna unit (AAU). Under a full workload, a single station uses nearly 3700W.

Is 5G more energy efficient than 4G?

Although the absolute value of the power consumption of 5G base stations is increasing, their energy efficiency ratio is much lower than that of 4G stations. In other words, with the same power consumption, the network capacity of 5G will be as dozens of times larger than 4G, so the power consumption per bit is sharply reduced.

Why is 5G so important in Norway?

“Norway has some of the world’s fastest mobile networks, and with 5G, they become faster and even more reliable. Given the current situation in Norway, we see how important the digital infrastructure is for those quarantined and those working from home.

Can 5G NR reduce network energy consumption?

IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 22, 8 (2023), 5536--5549. Pal Frenger and Richard Tano. 2019. More capacity and less power: How 5G NR can reduce network energy consumption. In 2019 IEEE 89th vehicular technology conference (VTC2019-Spring).

What is 5G NR?

The 5G NR standard has been designed based on the knowledge of the typical traffic activity in radio networks as well as the need to support sleep states in radio network equipment. By putting the base station into a sleep state when there is no traffic to serve i.e. switching off hardware components, it will consume less energy.

Does 5G increase energy consumption?

Although 5G networks offer larger capacity due to more antennas and larger bandwidths, their increased energy consumption is concerning. This paper investigates energy consumption issues from widespread 5G deployment using city-scale real-world mobile network data.