Reducing the power consumption in wireless access networks: overview and recommendations

Due to growing importance of wireless access and the steeply growing data volumes being transported, the power consumption of wireless access networks will become an important issue in the coming years. This paper presents a model for this power consumption and investigates three base station types: macrocell, microcell, and femtocell base stations. Based on these models, the coverage effectiveness of the three base station types is compared and the influence of some power reducing techniques such as sleep modes and MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) is evaluated