Connectivity on-the-go has been one of the most impressive technological achievements in the 2010s decade. However, multiple studies show that this has come at an expense of increased carbon footprint, that also rivals the entire aviation sector's carbon footprint. The two major contributors of this increased footprint are (a) smartphone batteries which affect the embodied footprint and (b) base-stations that occupy ever-increasing energy footprint to provide the last mile wireless connectivity to smartphones. The root-cause of both these turn out to be the same, which is communicating over the last-mile lossy wireless medium. We show in this paper, titled DensQuer, how base-station densification, which is to replace a single larger base-station with multiple smaller ones, reduces the effect of the last-mile wireless, and in effect conquers both these adverse sources of increased carbon footprint. Backed by a open-source ray-tracing computation framework (Sionna), we show how a strategic densification strategy can minimize the number of required smaller base-stations to practically achievable numbers, which lead to about 3x power-savings in the base-station network. Also, DensQuer is able to also reduce the required deployment height of base-stations to as low as 15m, that makes the smaller cells easily deployable on trees/street poles instead of requiring a dedicated tower. Further, by utilizing newly introduced hardware power rails in Google Pixel 7a and above phones, we also show that this strategic densified network leads to reduction in mobile transmit power by 10-15 dB, leading to about 3x reduction in total cellular power consumption, and about 50% increase in smartphone battery life when it communicates data via the cellular network.

翻译：移动互联是2010年代最令人瞩目的技术成就之一。然而多项研究表明，这一成就以碳足迹增加为代价，其碳排放量已可与整个航空业相匹敌。碳足迹增长的两个主要来源包括：(a) 影响隐含碳足迹的智能手机电池，以及(b) 为智能手机提供最后一英里无线连接而持续消耗更多能源的基站。这两大问题的根源相同——通过有损的最后一英里无线媒介进行通信。本文通过名为DensQuer的研究表明，基站致密化（即用多个小型基站替代单个大型基站）能够减少最后一英里无线传输的影响，从而有效攻克这两个导致碳足迹增加的负面因素。基于开源射线追踪计算框架Sionna，我们展示了如何通过战略性致密化方案将所需小型基站数量降至实际可行水平，最终使基站网络功耗降低约3倍。同时，DensQuer还能将基站部署高度降至15米，使小型基站可便捷安装于树木或路灯杆上，无需专用通信塔。此外，通过利用Google Pixel 7a及以上型号手机新引入的硬件供电轨，我们发现这种战略性致密网络可使移动设备发射功率降低10-15 dB，蜂窝网络总功耗减少约3倍，手机通过蜂窝网络传输数据时的电池续航提升约50%。