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

全球每年的电力消费支出超过100亿美元，其中蜂窝基站贡献了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采集和存储设备连接起来。这种基站的主要好处有三：(I)绿色基站适合部署离网基站，或在没有可靠电力的情况下；(Ii)它们将降低蜂窝运营商的运营成本，从而降低终端客户的成本；(Iii)它们将减少蜂窝基础设施的碳排放足迹。该项目的一个主要挑战是设计一种具有成本效益的基于绿色基站的系统，该系统能够充分利用这些新的收获和储存设备。因此，该项目的总体目标是为设计和运行配备能量收集设备的蜂窝基站奠定数学基础，并开发可在真实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、优化和博弈论的技术，以解决这一重要新兴领域的关键问题。因此，在这个项目上接受培训的研究生将接触到各种不同的学科，这反过来将对他们进入全球劳动力大军有利。此外，该项目将为本科生提供参与该项目更实际方面的机会。PIS还将与业界密切合作，帮助影响真正的系统。为了实现上述目标，对该项目的研究将集中在以下三个相互关联的关键推动领域：(1)动态能量控制：制定控制战略，以最大限度地减少由单一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包括：如何考虑能量采集和用户负载分布动态地动态控制每个基站的电池水平；如何基于能量储备在用户和基站之间形成关联；如何确保能量效率和用户体验都得到满足。(2)基站可用性控制：制定能源管理战略，通过联合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操作所产生的成本。(3)多运营商基站管理：合作与竞争：考虑到市场的实际情况和奖励/处罚，设计各种机制，通过在多个运营商之间汇集资源来降低能源成本。在本项目过程中开发的分析模型和算法将通过在俄亥俄州立大学的试验台上进行实验和轨迹驱动的仿真来验证。

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.