On analyzing Indian cellular traffic characteristics for energy efficient network operation

Abstract

Recent proliferation of mobile devices and high market demand have pushed power consumption of cellular networks to high levels in India. At the same time, the marginal gains to telecom operators for providing services have dwindled. Thus, a gap is slowly building up in the demand and supply of telecom services. The effect is adverse in urban areas where the demand for throughput and other load handling capabilities are high. While the base stations are setup to meet the peak quality of service (QoS) demands, vast opportunities exist to save operational and energy cost when loads are low. For the traffic patterns of one of India's leading telecom service providers, we show that such cost saving opportunities do exist in a systematic fashion and can be tapped to lower the operational cost. We further show that these opportunities can be predicted reliably and discuss a possible scheme to cut down on both energy and operational cost.