Quantifying the Energy-Saving and QoS Trade-Off in Traffic Offloading for Real 4G/5G Scenarios

Despite the potential for higher energy efficiency in 5G networks, current 5G Non-Standalone (NSA) deployments often operate suboptimally due to low utilization of 4G and 5G carriers during extended periods. Since base stations are the primary contributors to network energy consumption, implementing cell on/off switching and traffic offloading strategies is crucial for enhancing energy efficiency in current deployments. This paper investigates energy-saving opportunities based on these strategies in a real 5G NSA deployment, utilizing a dataset provided by a European Mobile Network Operator. Using Key Performance Indicators from the dataset, we propose a data-driven framework to evaluate the energy-saving and QoS tradeoff when selectively deactivating underutilized 5G cells and offloading their traffic to 4G cells with enough resources within the same sector and site. Our results demonstrate network-wide cell switch-off opportunities ranging from 17% to 79%, while ensuring data rates between 25 Mbps and 5 Mbps, respectively.