TREES: Toward a Real Energy Efficient System for 6G Communications

Minimizing energy consumption in mobile networks is becoming one of the most important targets for operators in reducing OPEX as well as CO 2 emissions. While 5G specifications were designed with energy savings (ES) in mind, recent studies have shown that a significantly higher level of ES would be possible. However, such ES gains would require a new network architecture and procedures which are not backward compatible with 5G. This article proposes a real energy efficient system (TREES) for 6G communications in which the network access and data transmission/reception operations are separated into different carriers to maximize ES gains. It was observed that, compared to conventional 5G networks, an ES gain of over 57% was possible with little impact on throughput performance.