Communication base station wind and solar complementary heat dissipation energy storage

This paper aims to consolidate the work carried out in making base station (BS) green and energy efficient by integrating renewable energy sources (RES). Clean and green technologies are mandatory for reduction of carbon footprint in future cellular networks.

A typical base station consists of different sub-systems which can consume energy as shown in Fig. 4. These sub-systems include baseband (BB) processors, transceiver (TRX) (comprising power amplifier (PA), RF transmitter and receiver), feeder cable and antennas, and air conditioner ( Ambrosy et al., 2011 ).

In ( Hashimoto et al., 2003 ), a 3 kW BS at an island is powered by 7.6 kW PV panels and and 8 kW wind turbine with 177 KWh back up batteries. Their system comprises a wind generator and cylindrical photovoltaic modules that are mounted onto the wind generator pole to save installation space and cost.

The radio resources can be manipulated to conserve energy by adapting the capacity and/or converge of the green BS. This is demonstrated in ( Valerdi et al., 2010 ), where both aspects are optimized according to the available renewable energy and battery back-up available.

The authors of ( Li et al., 2011a) estimate that such BS cooperation can save as much as 85% of the total energy consumed during off-peak hours in dense urban areas, which is considered 35% over and above the savings operators would make if they acted on their own.

However, the foremost challenge in equipping a BS with a solar array or a wind turbine is the sizing and configuration of the systems. Sizing of PV arrays and turbines is directly effected by the fact whether or not a BS is off-grid or on-grid.