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Power Cellphones

5G May Drain Batteries, While Base Stations Will Require Three Times As Much Power (ieee.org) 137

Posted by EditorDavid from the power-plays dept.
schwit1 quotes IEEE Spectrum: In 2017, members of the mobile telephony industry group 3GPP were bickering over whether to speed the development of 5G standards. One proposal, originally put forward by Vodafone and ultimately agreed to by the rest of the group, promised to deliver 5G networks sooner by developing more aspects of 5G technology simultaneously.

Adopting that proposal may have also meant pushing some decisions down the road. One such decision concerned how 5G networks should encode wireless signals. 3GPP's Release 15, which laid the foundation for 5G, ultimately selected orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), a holdover from 4G, as the encoding option. But Release 16, expected by year's end, will include the findings of a study group assigned to explore alternatives. Wireless standards are frequently updated, and in the next 5G release, the industry could address concerns that OFDM may draw too much power in 5G devices and base stations.

That's a problem, because 5G is expected to require far more base stations to deliver service and connect billions of mobile and IoT devices. "I don't think the carriers really understood the impact on the mobile phone, and what it's going to do to battery life," says James Kimery, the director of marketing for RF and software-defined radio research at National Instruments Corp. "5G is going to come with a price, and that price is battery consumption." And Kimery notes that these concerns apply beyond 5G handsets. China Mobile has "been vocal about the power consumption of their base stations," he says. A 5G base station is generally expected to consume roughly three times as much power as a 4G base station. And more 5G base stations are needed to cover the same area.
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5G May Drain Batteries, While Base Stations Will Require Three Times As Much Power More

5G May Drain Batteries, While Base Stations Will Require Three Times As Much Power

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  • Save power. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kaenneth ( 82978 ) on Sunday July 28, 2019 @02:42AM (#58999994) Journal

    Maybe leave out the hidden bitcoin miner in each router.

    • Anything hidden would be much more general than "bitcoin miner."

      Try hidden remote bios flash.
      Try hidden always-on subsystem complete with its own cpu.

      Try both.

      • Anything hidden would be much more general than "bitcoin miner."

        Not to mention the fact that the router's SOC won't mine for shit... anything else that we should be both pedantic and redundant about, while we're at it? ;)

  • Fixed home wireless (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday July 28, 2019 @02:46AM (#59000002)

    I realize everyone is different, but right now I don’t particularly see what practical difference 4G versus 5G will make with my phone. But I’d love to have this available to potentially let me walk away from Comcast for our home internet service. And, in that situation, increased power demands wouldn’t really matter.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I take it you've never been to a football game, concert, or any other event that packs a lot of people in a small area. 5G dramatically increases capacity and reduces range increasing the number of access points.

      Functional internet coming soon to a popular event near you.

      • Re:Fixed home wireless (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Sunday July 28, 2019 @07:39AM (#59000592) Homepage
        Yeah, great. Just what we need! A few more tens of thousands of people fiddling with their phones instead of actually enjoying the event they've probably paid good money to attend. OK, I can get the occassional need to look up some player/team stats, lyrics, or whatever. Even to take the odd selfie as a momento of the event. Other than that though, just put the damn phone down and enjoy the event already! Not having Internet when you want it might suck, but so does having to peer past a wall of several hundred glowing phone screens when you actually want to see what's going on.

        • After the ICE crash in Eschede [wikipedia.org] the first responders tried to communicate with both their emergency service network and the GSM cell were overloaded so for a while wireless communication was impossible.

        • Re:Fixed home wireless (Score:4, Insightful)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Sunday July 28, 2019 @01:50PM (#59002022)

          A few more tens of thousands of people fiddling with their phones instead of actually enjoying the event they've probably paid good money to attend.

          Wait what? Who said anything about actually enjoying the event. What about the people near the stadium? People who are actually trying to enjoy the event but can't actually get through to the people who have their tickets to meet up? What about after the event is finished and thousands of people are trying to arrange pickups or meet up for after parties?

          Great to see yet another very single minded response to an actual technical problem.

          Congrats on your one sided view of the stadium issue, today I was on a ferry with 5000 people travelling down a coast line in constant coverage of 4G and yet could not connect for the same reason. What event should I have been enjoying? Or the rest of the bored people on the boat for that matter?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        "5G dramatically increases capacity and reduces range increasing the number of access points."

        Reduced range is exactly what I don't want, TYVM. I don't need my battery draining itself trying to maintain a connection to a cellular tower, especially since I live in a building with stucco walls, which makes for a good faraday cage (I receive one OTA channel and get maybe 2 bars of signal if lucky as-is on 4G.)

        Also, more access points required. Great, so the tech creates a fuckton more e-waste pollution as a re

        • 5G can't even penetrate window glass, you don't have to worry what your walls are made of. Paper walls will block the signal.

        • Also, more access points required. Great, so the tech creates a fuckton more e-waste pollution as a requirement for coverage. Fuck that too.

          Are you special? Access points aren't some junk toy that you through out every year. They literally sit out of view doing their job for decades at a time.

          5G on range restricted frequencies are an event / outdoor issue, and won't even get through a window pane so it's not like this requirement has any application to you in your home, and it's not like 5G is magically restricted to a single frequency, or did you actually think they'd be rolling out a mobile phone system that flat out didn't work indoors.

          Why n

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Khyber ( 864651 )

            "Are you special? Access points aren't some junk toy that you through out every year. They literally sit out of view doing their job for decades at a time."

            There's still fucking more of them, thus more e-waste at the end of their life, because you sure as fuck know these hit the garbage bin, and not the recycling bin.

            Are *YOU* fucking special?

      • The one reasonable use case. I'm sure people want to spend more money on phones with shorter battery life so that they can attend sporting events and not have to pay attention to the game.

        • Huh? Who said attend the sporting event? Who is talking about paying attention? You've fallen into the same stupid trap as everyone thinking that a phone is used *during* the game.

          Ever walked past a stadium while an event is on? Or driven past one on a train and had your phone die on your? Ever finished a football game and tried to use the phone to call an Uber, or at half time tried to call your friends to meet at the bar? God forbid your local city sponsors some event near your house and you lose connecti

          • You're telling me to "get a clue," but you words underscore my point, they don't even go in another direction than my point.

            You've got it narrowed down to minutes of utility, or a minor convenience for people who are already stuck in a traffic jam, or attended an event without planning their transportation. You can't use gig-economy drivers to get everybody home from a stadium, don't be a dunderhead. They're either driving or taking public transport, and either way they'd be wise to stop txting and pay atte

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kent_eh ( 543303 )
      As far as I can tell, the bigest difference is additional bandwidth, and being deployed on additional RF frequencies that weren't previously available for use.

    • But I’d love to have this available to potentially let me walk away from Comcast for our home internet service.

      That is pure fantasy, there will never be enough bandwidth for cellular internet to compete with wired internet, especially for people in the highest tier of access speeds like cable.

      There will still be caps and throttling and all that. Those things aren't caused by 4G, they're caused by it being "cellular."

      You won't get high speed home wireless that is performant until the new generation of satellite ISPs come online. Base stations are already maxed out at the best frequencies.

      Also... does 5G penetrate clo

  • Who do not understand the technology signed on to something that is a problem. Or was it greed the usual motivator? I have seen this time and again in big company's. The managers know the buzz words. Or as one senior manager said to to me about the company president who was talking nonsense on a technical issue: "He is reading something some one wrote for him" When marketing types are is in charge this is what we get.

  • ... ditch 5g altogether. It is obviously not meant to service consumers but to enrich the companies who operate 5g.

  • I thought we (the researchers and the manufacturers) already knew!

  • Admittedly the delay was horrible, but they could call the moon with a phone in the 1960's...
    • The 85 foot dish antenna was a bit unwieldy though.

  • I don't really see what the point would be with 5G anyway. Can someone please explain it to me, in real, actual examples?

    I believe that for 95% of the time, 4G speeds will be perfectly fine on a smartphone. And for the 5% where you would want higher speed, there is probably free WiFi available.

    IoT devices typically need low-power radio and only low bandwidth, and it would be preferable if it was free to use --- in which case LoRa would be the natural choice.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )

      I think the point of 5G is to sell more bandwidth. Yes, 4G speed is perfectly adequate but 5G can serve more customers simultaneously.
      For IoT, I agree that LoRa is probably better.

    • 5G is population control.

    • Re:Why use 5G in the first place? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Njovich ( 553857 ) on Sunday July 28, 2019 @05:38AM (#59000318)

      5G has vastly lower latency. In chrome you can browse with added latency (for testing sites), google it. Try browsing at 50ms latency. If you have a good home connection you can notice a huge difference in how even regular webpages respond. This is the difference we should expect to see between 4G and 5G. The added bandwidth (both in frequencies and in bits/s) is mostly for simply being able to handle more users, which is nice for carriers or in congested areas, but the latency is where the real difference comes in for end users. Things like streaming gaming or even simply online gaming in games where speed is a factor aren't even an option on 4G right now, whereas it works perfectly on your home connection. 5G will finally cover the gap between home connections and mobile connections.

      • I have a 19ms ping and can happily play real-time games on my phone's 4G connection. I really don't see the super appeal of 5G for most people.
        https://www.speedtest.net/resu... [speedtest.net]
        PING ms 19
        DOWNLOAD Mbps 214.20
        UPLOAD Mbps 32.07

    • Re:Why use 5G in the first place? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Sunday July 28, 2019 @05:57AM (#59000362)

      I don't really see what the point would be with 5G anyway.

      Going from 4 to 5 is a 25% increase, so it must be that much better.

      Personally, I am waiting for 11G . . . most G's only go up to 10, but I will buy the one that goes up to 11!

    • The example I've heard is that to maintain LTE speeds in dense urban areas as usage goes up, the networks need more towers. But even there, eventually you are just overlapping coverage.

      That is, 5G is partially about being able to scale out what we have as density and demand increase and not degrade service.

    • I had a 4G+ connection today which didn't manage to pass a single packet through. Airwave congestion is a huge issue for 4G which is precisely what 5G solves, and while network consumption is higher, active time is lower paving the way for reduced battery consumption in the future.

      If you're focused on speed you're only addressing about 10% of the features of wireless.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        "Airwave congestion is a huge issue for 4G which is precisely what 5G solves"

        Solve current airwave congestion by creating future landfill congestion with all the 5G devices needed to cover any given area that a single 4G antenna could cover.

        BRILLIANT!

    • 5G has the ability to differentiate services which allows companies to deploy more pricing methods for service. That is really why there is such a switch to 5G.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      To sell the next gen plans on new hardware.
      New network speeds without having to own the network that reconnect a nation.
      Got a new 5G smartphone? In an area with 5G service?
      The telco is offering a new faster service without having to share with other network brands.
      None of that existing wireline network with "telco" "phone service" "network neutrality" questions.
      Its 5G from a brand of telco to a brand of smartphone. Over a network that can offer plans that make money.
      Not as "broadband" on existing

    • The point of 5G is that the PHBs don't understand that the technical limitations means it can't replace 4G. It is something extra, but it can never replace it. So they think they can reuse the 4G bandwidth for something else. Therefore they're pushing it. They don't understand that many of the limitations are physics limits, not merely engineering challenges. Frequencies matter.

      My hope is that after the modem chipset makers fleece the carriers this hard, their evil empire will collapse and we'll get real co

  • Energy per Bit increases by a single-digit factor. Bits per second increase by double-digit factor. Therefore, energy per second, or power, increases by the quotient, which is greater than 1.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ledow ( 319597 )

      Literally, to "push" a radio wave "up and down" at a higher frequency takes more energy. It's that simple. It's why your computer gets hot and supercomputers need humongous amounts of power.

      It's like saying "tapping a table twice per second takes more energy than tapping it once per second". Yes. Of course. And?

      The point missed is that the same data is then transmitted in half the time so the radio can dial back down even quicker.

      • You have no idea what you're talking about.

      • The point missed is that the same data is then transmitted in half the time so the radio can dial back down even quicker.

        Switches do not turn on and off instantly. Near the frequency limit of a technology, an increased amount of the time is lost waiting for the switch to switch, in addition to the energy lost to trigger the switch.

        Only at low switching speeds (less than ~ 20 Mhz) can you reasonably expect that transmitting the data would take half the time. You're in the act of turning the switch on almost at the same time that you're turning it off. Efficiency is much lower at those speeds, switching losses go way up. That's

  • 5G:

    1. 5x more base stations
    2. 3x more power per base station
    3. Beamforming focusses radio energy onto subscribers
    4. 10x-100x higher frequency radio waves
    5. 2.5x more power usage by subscriber devices

    5G appears to be driven by mobile network operators trying to become ISPs. Unfortunately, this may come at the expense of our health -- for example, a greater incidence of certain cancers.

    For more information, read the excellently researched book "Disconnect" by Devra Davis [wikipedia.org], PhD, Master of Public Health.

    • Care to cite a peer reviewed study on the health impacts of low power non ionising radiation?

      Just kidding mate, there's no such study supporting you loon views. Please find yourself another platform. This is news for nerds, not conspiracy theories for nutbags.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Khyber ( 864651 )

        "Care to cite a peer reviewed study on the health impacts of low power non ionising radiation?"

        I can blind your ass with a "low power" "non-ionizing" .5w IR laser pointer.

        Care to actually use your brain?

      • Once upon a time, the X-Ray machine was invented.

        Doctors hailing this new machine as a marvel said, "We should X-Ray pregnant women with our new amazing machine to check the position of the unborn baby."

        Meanwhile children started to develop strange anomalies and cancers.

        Dr. Alice Stewart looked at the disease data and said, "I found something, it seems there is a very strong link between prenatal X-rays and diseases like cancer in children.
        https://www.nytimes.com/2002/0... [nytimes.com]

        The establishment sent, "No there i

        • When my dad was a kid the shoe stores had X-ray machines, and the kids would hang out taking turns irradiating their feet until Al Bundy managed to run them off.

          I remember in the late 90s there was some concern about certain digital cell phone frequencies. Mice exposed to the levels caused by placing the highest powered phones against the side of the head all day would experience mild confusion and reduced memory. Everybody said, "Yay! This proves it doesn't cause cancer!" and ignored the results. The level

  • From having the resilience to barely able to penetrate through obstacles such as a sheet of paper (unless the paper contains moisture, which in that case forget about your signal going through any solid objects...), a range necessitating the need for a cell every few hundred feet, and drawing enough power draw to reduce your mobile time to a few hours outside: 5G is a standard that only mobile operators looking for a government handout could love.

    Once operators declare 5G a national security infrastructure

  • That situation would seem to be a deal-killer. 50% higher energy consumption at existing base station density could work, but seeking out 3x stations with 400A services (in the US) is going to have a pretty big impact. Backup power will also be a challenge. Hard to understand the market demand that requires this level of investment today.

    • Lol you think that's bad try charging a Tesla. Market demand is often not understood by people who have absolutely zero vision.

  • TFA admits 5G uses the same OFDM scheme as LTE and then goes on to say OFDM is a large part of the responsibility for increased power consumption.

    In reality the problem is proliferation of huge numbers of MIMO tx/rx elements within base stations. In the end carriers will simply deploy 5G the same way they deploy 4G and as a result it won't work much better than 4G but they will advertise the heck out of 5G anyway until this particular meme is no longer profitable to exploit.

    In a way 5G is just another mark

  • Higher power requerimients and needing more base stations to cover the same area means higher costs for operators...which will obviously be passed down to customers. So something I might or might not benefit from will make my bill more expensive. Just what I needed thanks /s.
    I use small amounts of data (around 1GB/month) and I'm perfectly happy with 4G. I say, get scientists back to the drawing board and keep things as they are until there's actually a standard that is a noticeable improvement over 4G.
  • The OFDMA used in 4G (LTE and WiMax) required more processing power than CDMA used in 3G (yes, 3G GSM relied on CDMA [wikipedia.org] - GSM lost the CDMA vs GSM war and adopted CDMA as part of its standard). So much so that the early 4G phone I got would only last about 4 hours when I browsed in 4G mode, vs 12+ hours in 3G mode.

    What eventually happened, and the reason 4G is ubiquitous today, is that integrated circuits became more power-efficient. Within a few years, calculations which required a processor which drew 5
  • Base Stations Will Require Three Times As Much Power; 5G is expected to require far more base stations; 5G May Drain phone batteries, *likely all the routers have Chinese spyware installed at the factory. Wow That's a whole lot on the minus column, not seeing to many benefits yet.
  • Let's see, a few people might actually need the faster speed, but at the cost of accurate weather forecasting, bad battery life, and the addition of hot-running phones. It doesn't sound like something that's ready.
  • Why is 5G even necessary? Is 4G not fast enough? Who out there has a genuine need for the tech (at this moment) that 4G doesn't satisfy?
    I can't help but to suspect 5G is being rushed out.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • We're going to be frying ourselves. These are microwaves. Now they want to put them everywhere because they have such a short range.
    In other countries I understand where these towers are nothing grows around them. They were fine with the 4G towers. If it's not doing plants any good it's probably not doing us any good.
    I predict big lawsuits.

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