ABI/InterDigital Report: Wireless Ecosystem Energy Consumption to Grow by 160% by 2030
November 11 2020 - 4:00AM
The massive projected increase in power needs of the world’s mobile
technology – a more than doubling by 2030 – underscores a call for
an increasing role of renewable energy in mobile. According to a
joint study released today by InterDigital, Inc. (NASDAQ: IDCC), a
mobile and video technology research and development company, and
ABI Research, the 5G ecosystem will see a 160% increase in power
requirements by 2030, reaching the expected equivalent of all UK
households in that year.
The study, Environmentally Sustainable 5G Deployment, quantifies
the energy footprint for approaching 5G deployment and identifies
best practices to encourage energy sustainability as wireless and
technologies evolve. Written by ABI Research and commissioned by
InterDigital, the report cautions that anticipated advancements in
5G technology are also a catalyst for growing energy consumption –
a trend that should be closely followed by the evolving tech
industry.
“The advent of 5G holds unprecedented promise for the wireless
ecosystem and our world, but we must remain clear-eyed about the
staggering energy demands of 5G and its life-changing use cases to
develop appropriate and timely solutions,” said Henry Tirri, Chief
Technology Officer, InterDigital. “We must consider the
environmental footprint, in addition to the technological impact,
to ensure 5G and future generations of wireless technologies exist
and thrive in a responsible and energy-stable world.”
According to the report, mobile telecommunications represents
one of the wealthiest industries in modern times, with 5.3 billion
users and $1.38 trillion in service revenues. Each generation of
wireless has contributed to driving demand for mobile services and
opportunities for new use cases around the world and has laid the
groundwork for the current race to 5G. Compared to previous
generations of wireless, the expected ubiquity and flexibility of
5G make it imperative to address its energy consumption at the
onset of deployment and throughout all components of network
infrastructure and end devices, to make 5G as sustainable as
possible.
The sustainability research identified key points of
consideration to pursue more energy-conscious 5G network
deployments:
- By 2028, 5G networks are expected to
achieve widespread adoption in consumer and enterprise ecosystems,
resulting in a huge increase in energy consumption and eventual
replacement of legacy LTE networks.
- 5G will usher in aggressive growth
in energy consumption. In 2020, overall energy footprint of the
global wireless ecosystem, including network infrastructure and end
devices, topped 19.8 million tons oil equivalent (Mtoe) per year.
By 2030, consumption is expected to grow to 51.3 Mtoe – a number
equivalent to all the energy to be consumed throughout Sweden, or
roughly the same amount of energy to be consumed by all the
households in the United Kingdom that year.
- Connected devices will grow
exponentially as enterprises begin widescale deployment of IoT and
5G-enabled devices. This will result in a whopping 37% increase in
overall energy consumption by 2030 and spotlights the importance of
device-side energy management to tackle the CO2 emissions
associated with mobile devices.
- Communications service providers
(CSPs) must deploy an array of new network architectures to support
a proliferation of end devices and provide the best 5G user
experience. These architectures include a network of
millimeter-wave base stations, virtualization radio access network
(vRAN), massive multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) antenna
with beamforming, carrier aggregation, dynamic spectrum sharing,
network slicing, and edge servers and gateways, and will unlock new
capabilities, and new layers of complexity, that result in higher
energy consumption in cellular networks.
- As 5G usurps LTE, energy consumption
is expected to increase 61x between 2020 to 2030 due to the energy
demands of powerful network elements like massive MIMO and edge
servers, the proliferation of 5G cell sites, and the flexibility of
the 5G networks in both consumer and enterprise use cases.
- Power consumption of the 5G network
is expected to soar due to active network elements like
energy-hungry baseband units, remote radio heads, small cells, and
core networks. AI algorithms, new cell sites with improved battery
management, real-time monitoring are a few of the solutions to
mitigate energy growth in the 5G RAN.
The InterDigital-ABI Research paper is a part of InterDigital’s
sustainability research and thought leadership initiative dedicated
to identifying the primary challenges, and innovative solutions, to
address energy consumption and environmental sustainability across
all sectors of the technology ecosystem. InterDigital’s
sustainability microsite includes the latest research and white
papers exploring the impact of energy sustainability in the
evolution of advanced wireless, video, IoT proliferation, and more.
You may learn more here.
To read a final version of the report, Environmentally
Sustainable 5G Deployment, please click here.
About InterDigital®
InterDigital develops mobile and video technologies that are at
the core of devices, networks, and services worldwide. We solve
many of the industry’s most critical and complex technical
challenges, inventing solutions for more efficient broadband
networks, better video delivery, and richer multimedia experiences
years ahead of market deployment. InterDigital has licenses and
strategic relationships with many of the world’s leading technology
companies. Founded in 1972, InterDigital is listed on NASDAQ and is
included in the S&P MidCap 400® index.
InterDigital is a registered trademark of InterDigital, Inc.
For more information, visit: www.interdigital.com.
InterDigital Contact:Roya
StephensEmail: roya.stephens@interdigital.com +1 (202)
349-1714
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