There are various excellent literature's available that derive the power consumption model of a macrocell base station using number of sector, traffic load etc. as variables. But none of them considered the impact of antenna gain. This is surprising, as in practice antenna gain is common and varies with scenarios, BS types etc.
Why is the antenna gain not incorporated in the base station power models? If so, then how would I integrate it's impact on the existing models?
Good question! I wonder if it's a simple matter of "that would just be too hard." There are many variables involved, including what link capacity is considered adequate at the edges of cells. That too has consequences in transmit power. Maybe the studies prefer to normalize all these options?
Maybe someone has a better answer for you. As an aside, I found out some time ago that only 2G GSM service placed a consistent bit rate requirement throughout each cell. The others don't. So that the inflated number often advertised will typically only apply to users close to the base station.
The antenna gain doesn't consume any power.
An omni-directional antenna has 0 dB antenna gain. Practical antennas emit signals with a certain directivity and this is what the antenna gain describes. If your phone is located in the sector that the antenna pattern is focused towards and the antenna gain is 10 dB, then your received signal will be 10 dB stronger than it would have be if the base station instead had an omni-directional antenna.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antenna_gain
It is, however, important to notice that the power amplifiers of base stations are rather inefficient. If you want to emit 40 W and the efficiency is 25%, then you will actually consume 160 W. This is a very important factor to keep in mind when modeling the power consumption.
Therefore, gain is the accumulated power of an omnidirectional antenna in a specified direction, thus there is a higher concentrated power on a desired direction, while the total power consumption remaining the same.
Dear Sir,
Study the topic Link budget (Power budget) in Digital Communication book written by John.G.Proakias
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