With 5 billion mobile phone subscribers already in the world today and the projected rapid increase in wireless data consumption, the energy efficiency of cellular networks has now become an urgent issue –in terms of both a network operator’s energy cost (hence profit margin) and the perspective of environmental impacts. This is particularly the case for base stations, which can account for more than half of a network’s energy consumption. While much research in this area is already under way, many significant challenges at all levels still remain to be investigated. These issues range from fair metrics and the corresponding fundamental trade-offs to traffic patterns and user behaviours, and from circuit design and baseband processing to network deployment and dynamic reconfiguration.  

Cite: Fu-Chun Zheng, Luís Correia, Y. Jay Guo, Tim O'Farrell, and Ritesh Madan, "Special Issue on Improving the Energy Efficiency of Cellular Communications," Journal of Communications, vol. 7, no. 10, pp. 713-715, 2012. Doi: 10.4304/jcm.7.10.713-715