A Methodology and Testbed to Develop an Energy Model for 5G Virtualized RANs

Virtualized Radio Access Networks are a promising solution to reduce the energy consumption of 5G networks. However, the shift from traditional to virtualized RANs has rendered existing energy models for RANs obsolete. In this paper, we present a methodology and testbed to develop an energy model for vRANs. Our methodology estimates the energy consumption of Baseband Unit functions based on performance monitoring counters and utilization metrics collected on a testbed. Our experimental results offer insights into the distribution of energy consumption across RAN functions. These results suggest that, under our experimental conditions, the physical layer is considerably more energy-intensive than other layers. We believe that this methodology can serve as a foundation for constructing an energy consumption model that will facilitate the development of energy-aware load balancers and the selection of energyefficient RAN deployments, leading to significant energy savings.