Life cycle assessment of mobile communications networks

To study the most appropriate design for mobile telecommunications networks, we conducted a life cycle assessment of second-generation cellular phone networks (2G networks) and Personal Handyphone System networks (PHS networks) in Japan. Our results show that, for the same number of subscribers, without considering differences in communication quality, 2G networks, which use a smaller number of higher power base stations (BSs), produce less CO/sub 2/ emission than PHS networks, which use a larger number of lower power BSs. An effective way of reducing network CO/sub 2/ emission would be to design BSs that consume less power, thus reducing their emission at the use stage. It would also be effective to design easily re-usable handsets composed of fewer components and materials to reduce their emission at the production stage.