5G technology is revolutionising the mobile industry, but its realization brings many challenges to the mobile operators. Energy saving, for one, is one of the top priorities. In order to support the green economy, ZTE has developed a new-generation solution that it says can further reduce the power consumption of radio networks, to save up to twice as much energy as the existing energy saving solutions.

Building on its previous innovations in network energy saving, ZTE has developed PowerPilot to bring AI-driven power optimisation to even grander scale of wireless networks. This takes power savings to a new level, moving from single-mode power systems to optimising energy use across both 5G networks and all previous generations (4G, 3G and 2G). What makes this unique is the system can coordinate power consumption among multiple frequency bands and radio access technologies, piloting the traffic to the most suitable layer for optimal energy efficiency across the whole network.

How does it work?

PowerPilot looks at different types of services running over the network and their power requirements and works in real time to choose the most energy-efficient delivery possible. Artificial intelligence and big data are leveraged along with the multi-layer energy-saving technologies across the base stations and O&M system to achieve optimal power consumption without human intervention. This means operators not only save energy, but also free up human resources for core tasks and lower their operating costs at the same time.

Results in the field

ZTE has a long history of commercially deploying network energy solutions, with the following milestones in the past year. 

• In March, the company partnered China Mobile to deploy the sub-frame shutdown and deep sleep technologies for saving energy on a commercial 5G network in Lianyungang, China. It found the sub-frame shutdown from 6 a.m. to midnight can reduce energy usage by 16%, and this can reach up to 25% on a single site over 24 hours when traffic is low. 
• In July, ZTE trialed energy-saving techniques with China Telecom on 5G base stations in Suzhou, showing they were ready for large-scale commercialisation. The symbol shutdown method was proved to be able to reduce power consumption by more than 20%, and the deep sleep technique cuts power use by up to 80% on AAUs. Symbol shutdown and deep sleep together achieved an over 30% reduction in power consumption throughout the day.
• In August ZTE started trial on China Unicom’s 5G network in Dalian. The results showed that power consumption can be reduced by 10-20% with DTX shutdown technology, 15-25% with channel shutdown techniques and a whopping 60-80% with deep sleep measures. When a cocktail of the energy-saving technologies was put in effect, a single 5G base station with S111 configuration can save 10-12 KWh per day on average, with no impact on network performance. 

Double the power savings

PowerPilot builds on these ZTE innovations to deliver up to twice the energy savings of the existing solutions on the market. Taking an average network configuration of 10,000 sites with 4G and 5G as an example, ZTE estimates that PowerPilot can cut power consumption of 700,000 kWh in a week, equivalent to 550,000 kg of fewer carbon emissions.

Ready for deployment

ZTE has over 500 patents for environmentally friendly technology,  in-house-design chipsets and a new generation of high-efficiency power amplifiers. ZTE’s R&D labs have tested PowerPilot extensively in simulations of multiple types of network, including a variety of frequency bands, traffic loads and other parameters.