During the Huawei Win-Win Innovation Week hosted in Shenzhen, Philip Song, Huawei’s Carrier Business Group Chief Marketing Officer delivered a keynote speech titled “Green Development, Building Energy-efficient ICT Infrastructure”. His speech announced a suite of new solutions aimed at helping operators handle increased traffic volumes while simultaneously maintaining control over carbon emissions.
ICT infrastructure evolution from 5G and F5G to 5.5G and F5.5G and eventually towards 6G – which GlobalData expects to reach maturity in 2030 – will accelerate industry digitalization. However, the energy efficiency of networks will increasingly come under the spotlight and will be evaluated against the network carbon intensity (NCIe) index.
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Decoupling traffic growth from emissions growth
Huawei has been active in adding energy-saving innovations to its portfolio, including IntelligentRAN and Giga Green Site offerings, as well as its Power Star 2.0 solution, which powers down base stations in granular increments when traffic is low, among other features. Huawei’s new solutions announced at the Win-Win innovation week target three levels: the site layer, the network layer, and the operation layer.
At the site layer, Huawei’s simplified sites are integrated with Ultra-wideband RF modules and multi-band antennas which provide a higher degree of integration and save power consumption. Signal direct injection feeding, a unique feature to Huawei, reduces cabling within the antenna and therefore reduces energy loss and improves antenna efficiency. New materials allow Huawei to move sites fully outdoors, replacing equipment rooms with outdoor cabinets and removing the need for energy intensive equipment rooms and air conditioning units. Huawei’s One Blade One Site solution makes natural heat dissipation possible and features 97% site energy efficiency (SEE). Furthermore, outdoor cell sites make use of solar PV, with Huawei developing an AI-based PV-storage optimization solution to maximize the energy efficiency of using renewable energy.
At the network layer, the solution features innovation by upgrading the entire network from electrical switching to optical switching which it expects will improve energy efficiency by ten times. It is worth noting, however, that a worldwide shortage of fibre optic cable has driven up prices and will almost certainly disrupt telecom operators’ adoption despite being more energy efficient. Huawei has been simplifying its network architecture thanks to the multi-service processing ability of its routers which integrates four units of equipment into one. This reduces the amount of equipment room space needed thus improving the network energy efficiency. Finally, at the network level, Huawei’s solution leverages AI to support the dynamic hibernation of routers and automatically adjusts frequencies of network processors based on traffic volume.
The final element of Song’s presentation focused on green operations, stressing that Operation & Maintenance policies need to be designed for optimising energy efficiency. The solution implements real-time traffic control and analysis which adjusts the forwarding processors’ frequency or shuts down ports based on traffic volume changes ensuring that all indicators are visible, manageable, and optimizable. This is a critical feature as we cannot reduce what we cannot measure. Finally, Song highlighted that the new solution accelerates the migration of users to networks using more energy-efficient Radio Access Technologies, like 5G. Incremental improvements in energy efficiency of networks will make inroads into reaching net-zero by the middle of this century. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), energy efficiency represents more than 40% of the emissions abatement needed by 2040. We have the knowledge, technical expertise, and collective will power at hand to be able to halve global emissions by 2030, we just need to deploy these solutions at scale.
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