Debunking the “Green” NFV Myth: An Assessment of the Virtualization Sustainability in Radio Access Networks

Since the adoption of virtualization paradigms is seen as a viable way to fulfil the requirements of next-generation applications in a sustainable way, this paper examines the virtualization of the Radio Access Network (RAN), focusing on the C-RAN architecture, in order to better understand the impact of NFV technologies on power consumption and costs in real networks. The evaluation compares the power consumption obtained by deploying the Base Band Unit (BBU) using commercial devices or pools of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs). Publicly available datasets describing the traffic and the eNodeBs have been used for the evaluation, as well as datasheets for both the commercial devices and the VNF pools. Results show that the usage of the virtualized BBU causes consumptions around 250% higher with respect to the commercial deployment, and operation and capital costs over 66% higher, contradicting the common belief of NFV being a “green” technology. Further estimates conducted in this paper, however, highlight how the deployment of VNFs alongside specialized hardware solutions can represent a successful approach for telecom providers, with energy savings up to 20% and costs in line with the ones of dedicated hardware deployments.