Ownership benefits/costs analysis of green cellular networks

In this work, we show that there are two effects impacting cellular networks owned by an operator as a consequence of the application of the green networking via Sleep Modes (SMs) state to Base Stations (BSs). On one side, it is possible to save money from the electricity bill by exploiting SMs. On the other hand, however, the SM state triggers a variation in the failure rate of the BS, and therefore in the replacement/reparation costs to fix it. We therefore derive a simple model to compute the total savings vs. costs for an operator network. Our results, obtained over 3G and 4G scenarios, show that there is a trade-off between the saving and the related costs. Moreover, we show that the costs incurred by the operator depend on different factors, including: i) the energy-aware strategy, ii) the specific technology adopted, and iii) the components used to build the BS.