Cost Aware Grid Energy Minimization in Heterogeneous Green Wireless Networks

Abstract

Recent emphasis on efficient energy utilization in green mobile communication has become a paramount concern of reducing carbon footprints to make the network greener. Energy harvesting from ambient energy sources has the potential to reduce the dependency on grid power supply or diesel generators (DG), providing attractive benefits in diverse domains. This paper's aim is to minimize the on-grid power consumption with the integration of green energy generators such as solar PV modules while satisfying system constraints. We decompose the problem into two categories: grid energy minimization problem and the renewable energy system sizing problem provisioning minimum net present cost. Extensive research has been carried out to address energy yield, cost assessment, and greenhouse gas emissions aspects in the context of LTE heterogeneous cellular networks (HCN)in consideration of the intermittent nature of solar energy generation and temporal dynamics of traffic load demand. Numerical results illustrate a substantial improvement of on-grid energy savings and subsequent carbon footprints of the proposed network model compared to the conventional scheme.