Thesis Defense : Smart grid-aware radio engineering in 5G mobile networks

Speaker : Wael Labidi
Telecom SudParis
Date: 21/03/2019
Time: 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Location: Paris-Rennes Room (EIT Digital)

Abstract

The energy demand in mobile networks is increasing due to the emergence of new technologies and new services with higher requirements (data rates, delays, etc). In this context, the Mobile Network Operator (MNO) has to provide more radio and processing resources in its network leading for higher financial costs. The MNO has no choice but to implement energy saving strategies in all the parts of its infrastructure and especially at the Radio Access Network (RAN).
At the same time, the electrical grid is getting smarter including new functionalities to balance supply and demand by varying the electricity prices, allowing some aggregators to be part of the supply process and signing demand response agreements with its clients. In the context of reliable smart grid, the MNO having thousands of evolved NodeB (eNB) spread over all the country, has to play major role in the grid by acting as a prosumer able to sell electricity. In African Sub-Saharan countries however, the grid may be not reliable or even non existent, the MNO has no choice but to deploy a Virtual Power Plant (VPP) and rely partially or totally on it.
In this thesis, we study the interactions between the network operator and the grid either reliable or not in both developed and developing countries. We investigate both long term and short term optimal energy related management, with the aim of minimising the operator’s Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for energy per base station which is the sum of its Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) and Operational Expenditure (OPEX) while satisfying the growing needs of its user traffic in the cell.
The long term study enables us to make semestral based investment decisions for the battery and renewable energy sources dimensioning considering equipment performance degradation, predictions on users traffic growth and electricity market evolution over a long period of time counted in years.  
In the case of being powered by a reliable smart grid, the short term policy helps the operator to set on a daily basis, an optimal battery management strategy by performing electricity arbitrage or trading that takes advantage of the electricity prices hourly fluctuations in order to minimize the MNO daily energy bill while respecting some rules on the usage of its equipments. 
In the case of a non reliable or off-grid environment, the operator is powered by hybrid sources coupling storage, diesel generators, solar power and the grid if the latter is operational. Here, we define a fixed order of priority on the use of these sources that extends the battery lifetime and maintain its performance.

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