BT Group has implemented energy-saving ‘cell sleep’ technology across its EE mobile sites nationwide, following successful trials in each of the UK’s home nations.
‘Cell sleep’ software works by putting certain 4G LTE capacity carriers to sleep when the capacity is not needed, based on predicted periods of low traffic which have been established for each site through machine learning.
The system then automatically wakes up during busy periods, and is also configured to react to unexpected surges which might occur during scheduled sleep modes – in which event, the carriers wake up within a matter of seconds to serve demand without any interruption to customers.
An even lower power state, ‘deep sleep’, can also be activated if required, for example during overnight periods of extremely low demand.
Both the ‘cell sleep’ and ‘deep sleep’ functionality is provided by the respective RAN equipment supplier on each of EE’s sites. BT Group’s site data is used to inform the statistical algorithms which then autonomously inform the functionality.
