An experiment in reducing cellular base station power draw with virtual coverage
Kurtis Heimerl, Shaddi Hasan, Kashif Ali, Tapan S. Parikh, Eric Brewer · 2013
Lack of access to cellular service often goes hand-in-hand with lack of access to power. For example, the GSM Association estimates that 95% of people living without cellular access in East Africa also lack access to grid power. This situation forces cellular network operators to build out power infrastructure along with their network infrastructure, dramatically increasing costs. While numerous equipment providers offer "low-power" GSM Base Stations (BTS) for use with renewable energy sources, these have a power floor of roughly 70W, which still necessitates a large upfront expenditure. The naïve solution to this problem is duty-cycling---simply turning off the equipment for portions of the day, usually at night. This commonly-adopted approach prevents important use cases such as all-hours emergency calling.