IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2019 - 65

much energy is required to supply
edge devices. In fact, the farther a device or system is from the power
plant and the closer it is to the edge,
the higher the multiplication factor,
also known as the power cost factor
(PCF) of its energy requirements.
Even a simple analysis shows us how
microwatt-level devices can have a
direct impact on the ability of the
utility grid to meet the load energy
requirements while maintaining reliability. This is what I refer to as the
5G Energy Gap, and it is the single
biggest risk to current 5G deployments [3]. In other words, microwatts
are deter mining the fate of terawatts (that is, an 18-order-of-magnitude spectrum).
Let us take a step back to consider
just how much power must be gener-

ated to support all of these relatively
tiny devices at the edge of the network (the farthest endpoint from the
core network, typically where most
devices reside). To do this properly,
we must follow the power from end to
end in what I refer to as the power
value chain (PVC), which represents
the full conversion and distribution
chain from generation to the end load
(without considering power plant efficiency, which tends to be quite awful).
Figure 1 shows a graphical representation of the PVC for a typical edge
device (that is, a smartphone or user
equipment) to the power plant. Now,
just as a start, let us consider what
the true cost of a single milliwatt is.
In other words, how much power
must be generated at the plant to
source 1 mW of received power at the

December 2019

smartphone? Figure 2 breaks the
PVC into the ma jor components
of p ower distribution, with estimates (minimum to maximum) of
the loss for each stage.
Even through this simple exercise,
one can see that anywhere from 18 to
60 W must be generated to have 1 mW
of received power at the edge device.
This is a PCF of ~18,000-60,000 for
how much power must be generated
to provide that single milliwatt [4]. It
should be noted that this analysis
does not include all of the energy
required for processing data and
other overhead factors. So, in reality,
we are talking about PCFs that can
be six or more orders of magnitude
for 1 mW of instantaneous power.
Now, multiply these energy requirements by how often a single device

z	IEEE POWER ELECTRONICS MAGAZINE

65



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IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power Electronics Magazine - December 2019

Contents
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