New concept of a modular wireless base station and benefits for network management and energy efficiency.

Conventional base station design does not longer fulfill network needs. New demand for energy efficiency, scalability, support for varying traffic load, flexibility in provided features and adoption to novel network architectures forces the “Plain Old Base Station” to change. Sophisticated modularization promises solution for the most of mentioned criteria. This paper presents a concept of a modular base station and advantages of scalable architecture paradigm SAfRAN. In this context particular emphasis is put on energy savings. Simulation results for macro base stations with different modularization levels and operation schemes give image of the relation between base station design and its energy consumption and promises excellent energy savings by a factor of 2 compared to conventional base stations. (6 pages)