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Aug. 18, 2008

Today, mobile base stations are almost everywhere, making wireless network coverage practical, economical and, most importantly, dependable.

However, they require a constant and very reliable electrical power source to operate.

Today's constantly rising cost of diesel fuel for power generators is pushing mobile wireless carriers to shift to more energy-efficient hardware and alternative resources.

One of them is solar energy. It dosen't cost as much as diesel fuel, and best of all, it's renewable and clean.

Now more and more wireless providers and carriers are experimenting with solar energy and solar cells to achieve the goal of cutting their energy costs, while at the same time reducing the "green house" effect.

One of them is Alcatel-Lucent.

The company is using modern solar panels for mobile transmission power, especially in equatorial regions. In the U.S., most wireless base stations already have some form battery backup power, but there is enough inconsistency among mobile carriers that the FCC is concerned about communications reliability in future emergencies. Remember hurricane Katrina?

However, nobody knows for sure the full scope of the problem. FCC spokesman Robert Kenny recently was quoted as saying “it's certainly well-documented that there is a big deficiency in this area, and we are actively working in addressing and correcting that issue.”

Among some of the new FCC recommendations that will come into law before the year is over is a new rule requiring a minimum of 24 hours of power backup for central sites and a minimum of 8 hours for remote sites. Some industry observers even think those minimum rules aren't enough and should be increased.

The rule is not yet official because of a legal challenge from the CTIA and Sprint Nextel, asserting burdens of logistics and cost. In July, a Federal appeals court sent the rule back to the FCC for clarification. Now it’s likely to take effect later in 2008 or early in 2009 with various compromises and some exceptions.

Overall, the FCC will then be able to better collect and analyze data showing where the problems are most important and to efficiently have them corrected.

Wireless carriers today are understandably reluctant to share details of their site backup power methods. Verizon Wireless is not among the companies fighting the FCC plan and is widely commended in the industry for having redundant power supplies and the heavy use of diesel power generators. However, the company still considers details of its backup processes to be a confidential and a competitive advantage, said spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.

About 68.5 percent of a typical mobile site’s power consumption goes to the base stations which can easily pull several kilowatts, largely because of mobile data services that require more bandwidth than simple voice calls. “The base station does consume a lot of power. There’s a drive toward reducing energy costs. At the same time, there’s also a requirement to improve the availability,” said Khurram Sheikh, chief product and development office at Powerwave Technologies.

Sheikh added “it’s also important that we have redundant power available at these locations. You could say they’re conflicting trends but nevertheless, they are still trends happening in our rapidly changing industry.”

"We’re trying to become about 20 percent more efficient in terms of power consumption. I think in the next twelve months it’ll go toward that," added Sheikh.

Alcatel-Lucent is also working on reducing power draw by adding some kind of intelligence to its network management software.

In November 2007, Powerwave announced software called NetWay, and has other software still under development called Max-COM, that helps wireless carriers such as Alcatel and AT&T tune their base stations by remote control including the ability to power down certain functions when there’s reduced demand.

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    This article was featured on Business 5.0.

Source: IT Direction.