Green Telecommunication Networks to Mitigate CO2 Emissions Green Communications and CO2 Emissions

Reducing energy consumption has become a hot research topic in the past few years. The concept of Green Networking is gaining popularity not only because of the growing environmental awareness worldwide but also the economic opportunities and benefits of reducing energy consumption in the ICT industry. In this work, we will identify the importance of green research and explore the state of the art in the field with a special focus on green base stations. After identifying the key green metrics, we will explore the energy efficiency of traditional base stations and review the main possible improvements to its current structure as a standalone unit as well as the base station as a component in a cellular network. We find that a substantial mitigation of CO2 emissions from 2.4% to 7% of total emissions could be achieved, where the use of renewable energies is economically and technically feasible.