NeTS: Medium: Energy Efficient Operation and Control of Green Base Stations with Renewable Energy: Theory to Practice

全球每年消耗的电力支出超过100亿美元，蜂窝基站贡献了60-80%的能源消耗。为了减少蜂窝网络的能量需求，一种很有前途的新方法是将基站与能量收集和存储设备连接起来。这种基台的主要好处有三个：(i)绿色基台适合部署离电网的基台，或在没有可靠电力的地方；（ii）它们将降低蜂窝运营商的运营成本，从而降低终端用户的成本；（iii）减少蜂窝基础设施的碳排放足迹。该项目面临的一个主要挑战是设计一个具有成本效益的绿色基站系统，该系统可以充分利用这些新的收集和存储设备。因此，该项目的总体目标是开发配备能量收集设备的蜂窝基站设计和操作的数学基础，并开发可在实际蜂窝系统中实施的实用解决方案。该项目结合了网络、算法设计、控制、优化和博弈论等技术，以解决这一重要新兴领域的关键问题。因此，在这个项目中训练的研究生将接触到各种不同的学科，这反过来将有利于他们进入全球劳动力市场。此外，该项目将为本科生提供参与项目更实际方面的机会。pi还将与行业密切合作，帮助影响实际系统。为了实现上述目标，该项目的研究将集中在以下三个关键的相互关联的重点领域：(i)动态能量控制：制定控制策略，以尽量减少由单个运营商管理的蜂窝网络中基站的能源成本。这里要解决的一些关键困难是：如何动态控制每个基站的电池电量，同时考虑到能量收集和用户负载动态；如何基于能量储备在用户和基站之间形成关联；如何确保能源效率和用户体验都是满意的。基站可用性控制：制定能源管理战略，通过共同考虑交通需求和可再生能源供应，仔细平衡能源节约和开/关业务所产生的费用。多运营商基站管理：合作与竞争：设计机制，以便考虑到市场的实际情况和奖励/惩罚，通过在多个运营商之间集中资源来降低能源成本。在该项目过程中开发的分析模型和算法将通过俄勒冈州立大学测试平台的实验和跟踪驱动仿真进行验证。

The annual global expenditure of electricity consumed is more than $10 billion dollars, with cellular base-stations contributing to 60-80% of the energy consumption. In order to reduce the energy requirements of cellular networks, a promising new approach is to connect base-stations with energy harvesting and storage devices. The key benefits of such base-stations are threefold: (i) Green base-stations are suited for deploying off-power-grid base-stations, or where reliable power does not exist; (ii) they will reduce the operational cost for cellular providers, which could translate to lower costs for end-customers; (iii) they will reduce the carbon emission footprint of cellular infrastructure. A major challenge pursued in this project is to design a cost-effective green base-station based system that can adequately exploit these new harvesting and storage devices. Hence, the overarching goal of this project is to develop the mathematical foundations for the design and operation of cellular base-stations equipped with energy harvesting devices, and to develop practical solutions that can be implemented in real cellular systems. This project combines techniques from networking, algorithmic design, controls, optimization, and game theory to address critical issues in this important emerging area. Hence, graduate students trained on this project will be exposed to a variety of different disciplines, which in turn will be beneficial to them as they enter the global workforce. Further, the project will offer undergraduate students opportunities to be involved in the more practical aspects of the project. The PIs will also work closely with the industry to help impact real systems. In order to achieve the aforementioned goal, research on the project will focus on the following three critical inter-related thrust areas: (i) Dynamic Energy Control: Developing control strategies for minimizing the energy costs of base-stations in cellular networks governed by a single operator. Some of the key difficulties that will be addressed here are: how to dynamically control the battery levels at each base-station taking into account energy harvesting and user-load profile dynamics; how to form associations between users and base-stations based on energy reserves; how to ensure both energy efficiency and user experiences are satisfied. (ii) Base-Station Availability Control: Developing energy management strategies that carefully balance the energy savings and the cost incurred in ON/OFF operations by jointly considering the traffic demand and renewable energy supply. (iii) Multi-operator Base-station Management: Cooperation and Competition: Designing mechanisms to allow energy cost reductions by resource-pooling between multiple operators taking into account the practical realities of the marketplace and incentives/penalties. The analytical models and algorithms developed during the course of this project will be validated via experiments on a testbed at OSU, and trace-driven emulations.