Battery-Aware Green Cellular Networks Fed By Smart Grid and Renewable Energy

The increase of energy demand in cellular networks imposes big economic and ecological challenges. Answering to these challenges requires complex energy frameworks that consider Smart Grid, renewable energy, battery systems and employs efficient management of radio as well as energy resources. In this context, lithium batteries present very good performance indicators (e.g., high energy density, large service life and environmental friendliness) but can also have very poor use duration when the energy management system is not suitable. This is linked to the important consequences of radio resource allocation on energy consumption and operational cost. In this article, we study and propose energy and radio allocation mechanisms for cellular networks supplied with hybrid energy sources (grid and renewable). We propose a Battery Aging and Price-Aware (BAPA) algorithm that brings down the grid energy consumption of the operator while including battery degradation constraints. We decompose the problem into three subproblems: radio resource allocation problem, grid energy purchase problem and power allocation problem. We show that our algorithm performs very close to the optimal solution and outperforms a benchmark algorithm, allowing more efficient battery use, energy savings and network operation cost reduction with no impact on the QoS of users. Finally, we provide some insights into how the advancement in base station technology will help reducing the investment cost in future cellular networks.