Entropy-Based Energy Dissipation Analysis of Mobile Communication Systems

One of the most prominent physical aspects of mobile communication systems is that they are inherently non-equilibrium systems. Traditional researches on the energetic costs of communication systems pay little attention to the relationship between the energy and the information transmitted and processed by the system. On the other hand, recent breakthroughs in nonequilibrium thermodynamics have led to a deeper understanding of the thermodynamics of information. To investigate the energetic costs of a mobile communication system at a fundamental level, in this paper, an entropy-based energy dissipation model based on nonequilibrium thermodynamics is first proposed for mobile communication systems. The energy dissipation model relates the energy and information through the common concept “entropy” from thermodynamics and information theory. Moreover, the theoretical minimal energy dissipation limits are derived for typical modulations in mobile communication systems. Simulation results show that the practical energy dissipation of information processing and information transmission is three and seven orders of magnitude away from the theoretical minimal energy dissipation limits in mobile communication systems, respectively. The energy dissipation model and results derived in the paper provide guidelines on how to design future mobile communication systems to minimize the thermodynamic costs.