Take Renewable Energy into CRAN toward Green Wireless Access Networks

Wireless networks have experienced fast development in the past decades. Various advanced wireless technologies have been proposed. To catch up with the ever increasing diverse communication needs, one main developing trend is on the network virtualization. CRAN is proposed to abstract the physical network resources to allow flexible and efficient resource use and sharing. It has been widely recognized that huge energy consumption has been raised due to the massive deployment of cellular networks. Lowering the network energy consumption, therefore, becomes a topic of great concern. In this article, we are motivated to propose a novel architecture, Re-CRAN, which integrates DER, DESD, and energy routers into CRAN and enables ingenious management of both network resource and energy resource. By a case study on the RRH management in a dense Re-CRAN, we prove the high energy efficiency benefit from our design.