Energy Efficiency Evaluation of Linear Transmitters for 5G NR Wireless Waveforms

With the anticipated industry-wide adoption of 5G, it is a matter of urgency to quantify and optimize the energy efficiency of 5G communication devices, and particularly their wireless transmitters. This paper contributes two major results to address these requirements. First, the energy efficiency of linear transmitters is quantitatively evaluated as a primary performance metric when using any communication signal waveform, particularly those transmitters used in 5G NR (New Radio), with long-term evolution as the baseline. A generic upper-bound methodology called modulation-available energy efficiency is applied. Second, the impact of multiple device technologies is examined against this calculated upper bound and it is shown that implementing technology choice has a significant influence on actual transmitter efficiency results.