Reducing Energy Consumption in Access Networks: Comparison and Analysis

Abstract

The energy consumption of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector is keeping increasing recently. It is estimated to account for 2% of the total energy consumption worldwide. Access and aggregation networks including modems, gateways are responsible for 80% of total network-based energy consumption, while the average utilization of access networks is really low. In this paper, our aim is reducing the power consumption in the access networks. We first study the impact of packet distributions on energy saving efficiency. After classifying the users by tree traffic characteristics, packet numbers, online duration and online times in three groups, we introduce energy saving strategies, sleep-on-idle, traffic rate adaption and traffic shaping and implement them to the single access lines of users in different groups. The results of evaluation show that we can get more than 70% energy saving by implementing the proper energy proportional strategies.