Energy Efficiency Strategies in 5G Wireless Communications
Summary
Energy efficiency has emerged as a critical performance metric in 5G systems, driven by the need to support diverse use cases—enhanced mobile broadband, massive machine-type communication and ultra-reliable low-latency links—while containing operational costs and environmental impact. On the device side, prolonging user equipment battery life requires intelligent sleep-wake scheduling, adaptive antenna usage and context-aware power management. At the network level, base stations exploit dynamic sleep modes, beamforming adjustments and traffic-aware resource allocation to minimise energy consumption without compromising coverage or capacity. Novel approaches span analytical modelling of discontinuous reception processes, machine-learning algorithms for traffic prediction, directed paging schemes for millimetre-wave beams and hybrid energy-harvesting solutions. Collectively, these strategies promise to reduce carbon footprint, lower operating expenses and enhance user experience across urban and industrial deployments worldwide.
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Energy Efficiency Strategies in 5G Wireless Communications publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in energy efficiency strategies in 5g wireless communications across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Discontinuous Reception (DRX): A mechanism that allows user equipment to alternate between active and sleep states to save power when no data is expected.
Inactivity Timer (IT): A configurable interval specifying how long a device remains in an active state after the last data exchange before entering sleep mode.
User Equipment (UE): Devices such as smartphones, sensors or industrial modules that connect to the mobile network.
Base Station (BS): The network infrastructure component that manages radio resources and communicates with user equipment.
Semi-Markov Model: A mathematical framework for characterising state transitions and timing in protocols such as DRX.
References
- Discontinuous Reception With Adjustable Inactivity Timer for IIoT. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (2024).
- Enhanced Paging Monitoring for 5G and Beyond 5G Networks. IEEE Access (2022).
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