Dynamic Basestation Antenna Design for Low Energy Networks

A challenge faced by the information and communications technology (ICT) industry is the growing data volume and associated energy consumption. How to both meet a dynamic traffic demand at a consistently low energy consumption level is of importance from both commercial and climate change perspectives. This paper proposes a dynamic basestation concept that allows the number of active sectors to be adjusted in accordance with the traffic load. This is achieved through a novel switchable antenna design that can adjust the azimuth beam-width by using a tuneable reflector. Simulation and theoretical results show that the dynamic basestation can reduce the total operational energy of a cellular network by a peak of 75% and a mean of 38%.