5G is 90% More Power Efficient than 4G, and Yet Still Requires More Power

5G has proven to be 90 percent more energy-efficient than 4G in terms of energy consumption per unit of traffic, says ABI Research.

But use of Massive Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (mMIMO) radios, and an increase in the number of radio sites, will still increase energy consumption, ABI Research says. 

A 5G base station requires three times more energy to provide the same coverage as a 4G network. That grows from an increase in the number of sites and radios. 

As always, that will change. A new generation of chipsets, for example, will offer typical energy savings of 30 percent to 70 percent.

“A 5G RAN consumes up to 2.7 Kilowatts (kW) of power with 64T64R mMIMO configurations in a typical condition, whereas a Long-Term Evolution (LTE) radio consumes about 0.8 kW,” says Fei Liu, ABI Research analyst. 

So “network operators should only deploy 64T64R mMIMO radio in dense urban areas with high traffic demands,” hsays Lio. 

That further suggests that millimeter wave frequencies--at least for some time--will not be terribly useful for coverage purposes. 

On the other hand, millimeter wave spectrum is quite useful for capacity support at the relatively small percent of cell sites that drive most of the capacity usage. Mobile network usage follows a Pareto distribution.

About 25 percent of cell sites represent half of all consumption. Conversely, 70 percent of cell sites support just 25 percent of total capacity demand. In fact, just five percent of cell sites support 25 percent of total traffic. That is why millimeter wave spectrum still is useful: it is an ideal tool for capacity augmentation for a relatively small percentage of urban cells. 

source: Ericsson