Power Monitoring for Energy Efficient 5G/6G with OAI and USRP
Contents
Application Note Number and Authors
AN-844
Authors
Bharat Agarwal and Neel Pandeya
Executive Summary
Energy efficiency is becoming a critical KPI for 5G-Advanced and 6G systems, especially in Open RAN, AI-driven PHY, and Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) testbeds.
Real-time power monitoring enables:
- Evaluation of baseband processing efficiency
- Measurement of RF front-end power consumption
- AI accelerator energy profiling
- Optimization of system-level energy-per-bit metrics
This application note demonstrates how to implement accurate power monitoring in a 5G/6G testbed using NI measurement hardware and software tools.
Demonstrator Scope and Overview
This demonstrator implements a measurement framework to synchronously monitor and measure power and energy consumption across multiple heterogeneous components of a wireless system.
Device Under Test (DUT)
5G/6G Base Station Prototype, consisting of:
- Linux server (baseband processing platform)
- OpenAirInterface (OAI) base station stack
- NI USRP (RF front-end)
- External switchable power amplifier (PA)
Demo Use Cases
1. 3GPP-Aligned Demo Use Case
Energy Savings via Enhanced Cell Sleep Mechanisms
- Demonstrates energy reduction at the base station power amplifier.
- Evaluates increased cell sleep opportunities.
- Quantifies real-time power savings during inactive traffic periods.
2. AI-RAN Demo Use Case
Energy Profiling of AI-Native vs. Traditional Receiver
- Measures energy consumption of:
- AI-native base station receiver
- Traditional (e.g., LMMSE-based) receiver
Key Feature of the Measurement Framework
All power and energy measurements are:
- Fully synchronized to a common time grid
- Aligned with the 500 µs slot grid of the 5G NR system
This synchronization enables:
- Slot-level energy analysis
- Accurate correlation between radio activity and power consumption
- Fine-grained energy profiling of PHY processing, RF transmission, and AI inference workloads
