We are pleased to share that our paper “Energy Efficiency Testing and Power Modeling of O-RAN Radio Units” has been accepted for presentation at the IEEE Future Networks World Forum 2025, taking place in Bangalore, India (November 10–12, 2025).
The paper is co-authored by Sarat Puthenpura and Alexandru Stancu (Open Networking Foundation/Aether), Zhuohuan Li, Prasanthi Maddala, N.K. Shankaranarayanan, and Ivan Seskar (Rutgers WINLAB), and Christian Nunez Alvarez and Gregg Albrecht (Keysight Technologies).
Supported by the NTIA Public Wireless Supply Chain Innovation Fund, this work addresses one of the most critical challenges in both current and future generation wireless networks: energy efficiency. O-RAN Radio Units (O-RUs) are among the biggest energy consumers in mobile networks, and understanding their power consumption is a critical first step towards making 5G and NextG systems more sustainable.
The team developed a multi-vendor measurement/testing platform and validated power models that reveal how O-RUs behave under different conditions. These insights will help guide the design of energy-saving features in O-RUs and AI-driven Radio Access Network optimizations, ensuring that open and disaggregated networks evolve in a way that is both innovative and environmentally responsible.
This work highlights the power of cross-industry collaboration, bringing together open networking, open source, academic research, and measurement expertise, to build a more sustainable future for global connectivity. Further results in this line of research will be released soon.
