Airborne Enabling Greener Telecoms

Introduction

Today's rapid advancements in telecommunications coverage have resulted in unprecedented growth, record infrastructure investments and accelerated service innovation. Billions of devices access the growing number of networks and platforms on the global communications grid. The energy that is used to keep the data flowing and airwaves buzzing is running out and changing the world’s climate. It is our belief that the wireless communications sector must join other industries in becoming more sustainable, to adopt responsible investment strategies, seek out innovative solutions to reduce their carbon emissions, and ultimately established energy security to ensure a long term, sustainable future.

The industry is start to respond by reducing the power required to run the vast data centres that power the worlds internet web sites and e-commerce systems, wireless equipment vendors are utilising wind and solar power systems to run remote cell sites, and the operators in developed economies are recycling upgraded mobiles to there operations in developing countries where there is still a great deal of use for these handsets.

We have focused on reducing the amount of power needed to run our microBTS devices by utilising processors and chipsets that require a smaller amount of power to run but still capable of delivering the performance required by modern day high speed communications. As a direct result of this our self powered WiMax micro bases station is capable of being deployed in both urban and rural locations running purely on wind and solar generated power.

At Airborne, we believe that whist it is correct and admirable to reduce the amount of power required to run the wireless network infrastructure, the real challenge to overcome where a massive difference in carbon emission can be made, is in the millions of users who access the communications network. By enabling the laptops, handsets and customer premises equipment (CPE) to run using less power and gain even an extra 1hr operation per day will make a significant difference. The benefits are not only reduced carbon emissions but a benefit to the end customer in as there laptop or handset lasts longer on the battery per day they get more practical use of the network.

We believe our meshed WiMax architecture makes good business sense by allowing operators to deliver these benefits and more to the end user whilst at the same time becoming greener custodians of the worlds airwaves.

Architectural principles and benefits to deliver real carbon savings

When deploying a structured mesh across a city the point of physical access is moving closer to the end user. Therefore the geographical distance over which a connection is made a reduced. This decreases the amount of power required to maintain a connection and increases the signal quality and coverage allowing higher data modulation schemes to be utilised delivering higher amounts of bandwidth. Where a network can deliver more data faster the amount of time a radio is physically operating is therefore greatly reduced, plus as the signal has to travel a shorter distance the amount of power used to transmit that signal is also reduced. This allows the end user laptops, handsets and CPE to use less power and receive a faster connection which greatly improves the end customers experience.

The technical principles of a connection that can be archived on a structured mesh network encompass the following high level equation:

shorter signal path = lower transmit power + better link quality = better coverage

The technical details of these principles are discussed on this paper: Link

The example contained within the paper demonstrates that over a 2sq KM urban structured mesh for 1 large town or city based in the UK with 10,000 network subscribers connected, up to 1,200 CO2 Tons can be saved on a yearly basis when compared to a macro cellular architecture. This figure would scale to enormous carbon savings when applied to an entire country or global economic zone.

Airborne delivers this benefit through its microBTS mesh nodes being small, quick and cost effective to deploy to existing street furniture, enabling an operator to deliver better network coverage using less power at both the infrastructure and customer ends of a connection without any compromises.