Home // International Journal On Advances in Networks and Services, volume 16, numbers 3 and 4, 2023 // View article

Energy Consumption Minimization in Data Centers for Cloud-RAN

Authors:
Line Larsen
Simon Friis
Henrik Christiansen
Sarah Ruepp

Keywords: Data center; cloud; C-RAN; green RAN; energy efficiency.

Abstract:
Data centers are to become a vital part of mobile networks when exploring new architectures such as cloud radio access network, which is seen as a more energy efficient alternative to today’s mobile network installations. However, the scale of a data center affects its energy efficiency, with larger data centers having more resources for energy-saving measures but at the same time different challenges than those faced by data centers of smaller scale. Hence, this work analyzes and compares energy efficiency of small, medium, and large data centers, and explores the energy minimization opportunities for cloud radio access network data centers. When moving processing from the radio access network to a data center to save energy in the radio access network, the mobile network operator does not want to move the energy consumption from the radio access network to the data center. Hence, energy consumption must be reduced in all segments of the network, and not moved to another segment. In the case study provided, cloud radio access network data centers are categorized as mid-scale and small-scale depending on the size of area they cover due to strict latency requirements of mobile network traffic flow. Thus, even though larger DCs prove to be more energy efficient, other factors, which in the case of mobile networks will be latency, will impact the size of the data center. Hence, this is a major driver to consider how energy consumption can be minimized in small data centers.

Pages: 75 to 89

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2023. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 30, 2023

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-2644