Climate change and next generation cellular systems

Abstract

As climate change could affect energy production, it can also undermine telecommunications development which requires increased energy consumption to drive improvement in network penetration, coverage and capacity. Employing secondary data analysis and simulation, this paper presents a study on climate change effect on energy consumption of telecommunication base stations. The impact of climate change on energy consumption was examined by introducing a climate factor,, into validated Base Transceivers Stations (BTS) power consumption models. The BTS energy demand was found to increase with increase in temperature due to cooling requirement. The result shows that, with 1^oC increase in outdoor temperature, heat flow through BTS shelter increases by 6.25%. This increase effect, manifests on cooling system with above 1 kW power. The result presented shows the importance of taking climate change variables into consideration when planning next generation cellular networks for sustainable deployment.

Key Words: Climate change, renewable energy, cellular systems, base stations, mmWave communication, sustainability