Evaluation of Power Consumption in 5G Networks at sub-6 GHz and mmWave

Being able to estimate the power consumption of a 5G network deployment before installation allows operators to identify the best technological solution for the investment. This operation is of high relevance in 5G networks, for both legacy sub-6 GHz frequencies and, most importantly, for the incoming millimeter wave (mmWave) ones. Indeed, the consumption of the latter has not been fully investigated yet. In this research work, we study the power consumption of 5G sub-6 GHz and mmWave networks for different cell architectures (macrocells, microcells, femtocells, streetmacro cells) and technologies (fiber, radio, copper) used in fronthaul and backhaul. The originality of this work resides in a thorough study of power consumption for sub-6 GHz networks across a variety of different configurations and, as main novelty, we investigate the overall consumption of a fully mmWave-based 5G network, showing how it represents an energy efficient solution to cope with the increase traffic demand.