Nokia to halve 5G base station power consumption by 2023

Nokia says that its AirScale 5G mMIMO Base Station will achieve an average power consumption reduction of 50 percent by 2023, outlining its commitment to climate change and zero emissions. This is enabled by continuous improvements in software functionalities and new mMIMO product variants based on its latest SoCs. In recent customer field tests, which took place on a live commercial network, the power consumption for Nokia’s 5G mMIMO BTS site was double digit percentage points lower than that of its nearest competitor.

Nokia is working to continuously improve its AirScale 5G mMIMO BTS portfolio with a target of reducing the average power consumption of 5G mMIMO Base Station by approximately 50 percent. This will be enabled by its next generation System on Chip (SoCs) chipsets and 5G advanced sleep mode features which will help to optimize the base station energy usage. Nokia is committed to having one of the industry’s most energy efficient product portfolios. It recently announced new Science Based Targets (SBTs) which fulfill its commitment to recalibrate in line with a 1.5°C global warming scenario.

5G is a natively greener technology with more data bits per kilowatt of energy than any previous wireless technology generation. However, the rollout of 5G networks is also set to increase traffic dramatically making it critical that the energy consumed does not rise at the same rate. There are several energy saving features at the radio base station and network levels, such as 5G power saving features, small cell deployments and new 5G architecture and protocols, which can be combined to significantly improve the energy efficiency of wireless networks.   

Ari Kynäslahti, Head of Technology and Strategy at Nokia Mobile Networks, commented: “Nokia is committed to contributing to solving the world’s sustainability challenges and we do that by ensuring our technology is designed to be as energy efficient as possible. This means using less energy during use and manufacture. Everything from our chipsets to our software and hardware is geared towards supporting this goal.”