OREANDA-NEWS.  Bell Labs, the industrial research arm of Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU), has discovered that today’s ultra-broadband mobile networks can make significant energy savings and performance gains by deploying a mix of macro and small cell radio base stations.

The discovery is the result of a research project - IntelliSpektrum – which brought together in collaboration, Bell Labs, the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics, the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institute and Intel Mobile Communications GmbH.

The project aimed to demonstrate how, even as mobile data traffic rises, and the number of devices connecting to a network increases, base stations can be dynamically adapted to better manage traffic loads and save energy without any adverse affects to end-user service quality. The research report findings included:

  • Significant energy savings are possible in ‘heterogeneous’ (HetNet) mobile networks that comprise a mix of radio base stations, including Macro, Metro, Pico and Femto.
  • Energy savings of more than 50% were seen in mobile networks with a high number of small cells compared to those comprised only of macro base stations. IntelliSpektrum has since transferred these results into the GreenMeter study of the GreenTouch™ initiative. This improved simulation approach will be used and distributed in GreenTouch publications.
  • HetNets are able to make more efficient use of infrastructure because they can better adapt to high- and low-load traffic situations.
  • While the number of radio base stations in close proximity within today’s ultra-broadband networks can create a risk of Inter-cell interference (ICI) and degrade service quality, when interference coordination is employed it not only reduces the risk of ICI but also shows gains in energy and performance - throughput gains of 10% in downlink (when the base station connects to the mobile device) and more than 50% in uplink (when the mobile device connects to the base station) were seen.