Limits of Energy Efficiency Improvements by Load-Adaptive Telecommunication Network Operation

Current telecommunication networks exhibit a nearly constant power consumption over time. However, the traffic load in communication networks significantly varies with time. Therefore load-adaptive networks which allocate their resources depending on actual traffic demands are expected to allow for a significant increase of telecommunication network's energy efficiency. Based on models for service-specific and aggregated traffic the energy consumption of load-adaptive networks is determined and compared to a conventional network with constant power consumption. The results show that adaptive networking can help to reduce the energy consumption of networks significantly.