Accounting for the Varying Supply of Solar Energy When Designing Wireless Access Networks

Traditionally, we rely highly upon fossil fuels for our energy provisioning, but there are drawbacks to using these fossil fuels: the risk for depletion in the future; the increased cost as already observed during the last few years, and the high impact on climate change. One virtually carbon-neutral alternative to fossil fuels are renewable energy sources, like solar energy. In this paper, we investigate the energy and network performance of a wireless access network powered by the traditional electricity grid and a photovoltaic panel system. An energy-aware management system for the future wireless access networks is proposed. This system consists of the management of the energy provisioning and storage system and the application of the proposed energy-saving strategies which aim to reduce the energy footprint through the traditional grid in case a renewable energy shortage occurs. To evaluate the network’s performance, this paper proposes a deployment tool with the above described energy-aware management system. The results show that it is promising to further investigate a more evolved and complex energy-aware management system.