Assessing the Energetical Cost of 5G Softwarization

5G is a new key technology for future communication networks. It aims at providing a broad range of new services and capabilities for users as well as facilitating its management for network operators (NetOps). Whereas networks still have monolithic architectures, 5G design takes advantage of softwarization and virtualization of its functionalities, for this purpose. However, 5G is also raising a lot of critics, especially related to its energy consumption. This paper then deals with assessing the energetic cost of the future softwarized 5G facilities. To this aim, an experimental platform has been setup taking advantage of the software 5G OpenAirlnterface (OAI) implementation. This paper shows the complexity of designing energy consumption measurement tools. It then exhibits the level of energy consumption of the main 5G components, pointing out the ones that need to be optimized.