REDUCE POWER CONSUMPTION IN GSM RAN

Author: Tinashe Hondova

Introduction
There has been a need to reducing operating expenditure by reducing the power consumption in the
network.
This report looks at options to achieve this in the GSM(2G) RAN.

Proposals
There have been two proposals to achieve the desired objective:
(i) The first proposal is to shut-down some RBSs during low traffic periods.
(ii) Use of built-in Ericsson features to reduce power consumption in the GSM RAN.

The two approaches are briefly discussed below.

Shutdown of RBSs During Low Traffic Periods
Description
The proposal will entail manual(by staff) shut-down of RBS perceived as not needed during low traffic
periods. It will be required that engineers identify the RBS to be shut down. The proposal would entail
that the network be configured in such a manner that performance does not suffer due to the
shutdowns. This may entail a re-look at some network configurations such as neighbour plans to ensure
performance is not compromised during the shutdowns.
Advantages
Advantages of this plan may be:
(i) The power savings may be high due to the fact that the whole RBS will be shutdown. This is
in contrast to the use of Ericsson RAN features which only reduce the power consumption of
the RBS.
(ii) Because the whole RBS is shutdown it may be easier to identify effects on performance of
this option.

Disadvantages
Disadvantages of this approach may be:
(i) The effect on performance may be profound if proper planning is not carried out.
(ii) The re-planning exercise may be taxing on staff if the reconfigurations necessary are huge.
(iii) The new plan may not fit in well with the operation of the RAN when all RBSs are in service
during high traffic hours.


Ericsson Features
Description
The Ericsson BSS has 3 features which can be used to reduce power consumption in GSM network
thereby reducing operating expenditure. The 3 features are
BTS Power Savings: This feature reduces the total power consumption in an RBS by reducing the
power bias of TRXs not needed during low traffic periods.
Timeslot Power Savings: This feature disables the power bias of the TRX on a timeslot basis if
there is nothing to transmit on that timeslot.
PSU Power Savings: Reduces the power consumption in an RBS by putting one of the PSUs into
standby mode when not all PSUs are needed.

Advantages
The advantages of this plan may be:
(i) The effect on network performance may not be significant since the features enable
automatic recovery of units should traffic rise and extra capacity is required. Units come
back online without human intervention.
(ii) There is very little re-planning needed. The only planning needed is in deciding on the
settings of the parameters for this features.
(iii) The company benefits from the likely extensive research carried out by Ericsson on use of
these features. Therefore there is a degree of trust that these features will not disrupt the
network performance significantly.
Disadvantages
Possible disadvantages are:
(i) The features require commercial agreements in order to be activated.
(ii) The features may disrupt network performance.
(iii) The power savings may be minimal.

Recommendations
The author recommends that if Ericsson are agreeable, the Ericsson features be tried first and the
savings evaluated. If this approach fails the shutdown root may then be pursued.