Chapter 3
GREEN Cellular Networks
3.1. Introduction:
To maintain profitability and to reduce the overall environmental effects, it has been
necessary and main concern for cellular operators to deploy energy efficient cellular
networks. It is evidence since last 2 decades that tremendous growth in cellular networks
market has lead us toward demand for cellular data traffic more rapidly. The introduction of
android and iphone devices, use of eBook reader such as ipad and the success of social
networking giants such as face book are the main causes for the magnificent and rapid
growth of data traffic and there demand increasing drastically day by day. The rising energy
costs and carbon footprint of operating cellular networks have led to an emerging trend of
addressing energy-efficiency amongst the network operators and regulatory bodies such as
3GPP and ITU. This trend has stimulated the interest of researchers in an innovative new
research area called “green cellular networks”. In this regard, the European Commission has
recently started new projects within its seventh Framework Programmed to address the
energy efficiency of mobile communication systems, viz. “Energy Aware Radio and Network
Technologies (EARTH)”, “Towards Real Energy-efficient Network Design (TREND)” and
“Cognitive Radio and Cooperative strategies for Power saving in multi-standard wireless
devices (C2POWER) and “(GREEN) Globally Resource-optimized and Energy-Efficient
Networks”.
