The commercialization of 5G is difficult, the construction cost of base station is high, and the power consumption is 12 times that of 4G. what do you think?

The problem of 5G power consumption is a difficult problem that operators must face and need to overcome. If there is no effective and feasible 5G power consumption solution, it will be difficult to promote 5G construction on a large scale. I will talk about the 5G business model later or become empty talk.

The power consumption of 5G is 12 times that of 4G? The 5G we are talking about after meals is actually 5GNR under 3GPP. The 5G spectrum used by China Mobile is 2.6GHz.

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4.9GHz China Unicom and China Telecom have allocated a wireless spectrum of about 3.5GHz. The high-frequency spectrum has a prominent disadvantage: insufficient diffraction ability, and the signal coverage area is much smaller than that of 4G base stations. This requires good signal coverage, so it is necessary to build more dense base stations. Then if we want to achieve the same signal coverage area, the number of 5G base stations is at least three times or more than that of 4G base stations. The power consumption of a 5G single station will probably be 2.5~3.5 times that of a 4G single station. With this superposition, the power consumption of 5G will be 12 times that of 4G. -The following figure shows the actual test results of operators on the power consumption of different manufacturers' 5G base stations.

The increase of AAU power consumption is the main reason for the increase of 5G power consumption. AAU is probably equivalent to the RRU+ antenna in the 4G era. Its function is to convert baseband digital signals into analog signals, and then perform power modulation and amplification to transmit the signals. Comparing the average power consumption of AAU in the figure below, we can know that the power consumption of AAU under 5G is twice that under 4G. The power consumption of 5G single station is about 2.5~3.5 times that of 4G single station, so the increase of AAU power consumption is the main reason for the increase of 5G power consumption.

From the perspective of operators. We say that the problem of 5G power consumption is a difficult problem that operators must face and need to overcome. It directly faces the high power consumption brought by the high power consumption of 5G, not to mention the construction cost and operating cost of the base station, but the rising cost of electricity will make them unbearable. At present, there is no effective and feasible 5G power consumption solution, so it is difficult to promote 5G commercialization on a large scale. For operators, starting with infrastructure materials, considering energy-saving materials, or adopting chips with more advanced manufacturing processes, and dynamically adjusting equipment power (reducing power by time) through some feasible technologies can also effectively alleviate the problem of high power consumption.

Users' thinking about 5G is difficult to commercialize and popularize on a large scale. We are also psychologically prepared to look at the problem of increasing power consumption of 5G. What's more, while we are looking forward to the commercial acceleration of 5G, we are also hesitant: if the problem of 5G power consumption is not well solved (the same is true for 5G equipment, and the problem of high heat will be more prominent), the increased cost will eventually fall on users.