Traffic management for sustainable LTE networks

This paper presents a technique to reduce the carbon footprint of cellular network through the use of renewable energy as a power source. Novel to other approaches in the literature, the presented technique adapts the traffic conditions and Quality of Experience (QoE) goals. Through effectively integrating energy and traffic management, the presented technique shapes the traffic serviced by the base station based on the predicted renewable energy surplus or deficit, and by controllably reducing the real-time video quality and increasing the data traffic delay. Simulation results show an increase of fifty percent in the proportion of time that the base station is powered from renewable sources with a very small, controlled and bounded impact on real time traffic quality and data delay.