Radio Access Network Cooperation with the Smart Grid: Bandwidth limitation or sleep mode?

In this paper, we consider a Radio Access Network (RAN) powered by the Smart Grid (SG), which provides monetary incentives to users who respond to the grid's explicit requests to increase or decrease their energy consumption. The typical solution for reducing the RAN's power needs is to employ Base Station (BS) sleep modes, but this may lead to a drop in user coverage. For this reason, we propose dynamically adjusting the bandwidth allocated to users in response to SG requests. Our study considers a realistic urban RAN and evaluates the effectiveness of bandwidth limitation in meeting the 5G's power reduction requests. Results indicate that this approach is particularly effective in high-density user environments, reducing power requirements by up to 20% while maintaining sufficient bandwidth for essential applications such as audio and video streaming. In contrast, BS deactivation can lead to substantial coverage losses, with user coverage falling below 90%.