Charting 5G Energy Efficiency: Flexible Energy Modeling for Sustainable Networks

Despite the rapid advancements in 5G technology, accurately assessing the energy consumption of its Radio Access Networks (RANs) remains a challenge due to the diverse range of applicable technologies and implementation solutions. Designing a versatile power model for estimating the 5G RANspecific power consumption requires extensive data collection and experimental studies to capture the diverse range of technologies and implementation solutions. The objective is to outline a versatile energy model capable of estimating RAN-specific energy consumption, encompassing both mobile terminals and the physical layer (PHY) of base stations. In this paper, we focus on the computational complexity of the baseband part of the model. The developed (part of the) model is compared with the estimation of the number of cycles (and energy per cycle) used by a specific implementation (here a Matlab code ported on an Intel target), enabling the assessment of the model with the estimation of energy consumed on a real target. The study's results show a good agreement between the model and the implementation, even if some parts need to be refined to take specific algorithms into account. The key contribution is the development of an initial flexible energy model with finer granularity, enabling comparisons of energy use across various applications and contexts, and offering a comprehensive tool for optimizing 5G network energy consumption.