Optimization of next generation solar-powered radio access networks

Due to the incontrovertible effects of global warming, society grows its sustainability awareness regularly, and governments start to change their energy policies to promote green energy sources. However, mobile network technologies have not been ready for new sustainable solutions. Besides, the high data demand in the next-generation radio access networks encourages mobile network operators to investigate cost-efficient solutions. Therefore, this thesis addresses the energy and cost optimization problems of a radio access network that uses the solar panels as an alternative energy source. We investigate several design problems from deployment and operation of solar-powered base stations in the third generation mobile communication networks to integrate the renewable energy sources into the function splitting, and Radio over Ethernet approaches in the fifth-generation centralized radio access networks. The proposed architectures are novel for their generations and offer remarkable guidance to the service providers to choose the proper size of renewable energy source equipment and how to operate this equipment to get the best energy and cost-efficiency. Besides, we provide both mixed-integer linear programming and heuristic solutions for different scales of problems. Also, we use real-world solar data and experiment with several instances to prove that our solutions can be implemented in the networks with different circumstances. Therefore, the operators can improve their profits and economic feasibility in their projected mobile communication networks while our proposed solutions reduce the energy consumptions and the carbon emission rates by promoting the use of renewable energy sources.