[g_p]

Do you have a source for 11 kW base stations?

Assuming we are talking about RF power output here, that is far higher than anything I've ever dealt with, and I'm not sure that it's at all right. A typical macro cell has 20 Watts of RF power output (for example).

The relevant international standards are those from ICNIRP, and they've recently updated and expanded on these in great detail around safety margins of various frequencies.

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, recently did a safety study of actual deployed equipment, looking at measuring the RF output from base stations.

Therefore I'm not sure where figures like 11 kW are coming from. Maybe there are some very hot (and inefficient) early base stations somewhere using 11 kW of mains power to produce 20 or 40 W of RF energy? But considering Huawei is heavily advertising 5G as being "greener", that wouldn't seem likely either. But even then, this is far higher than even the wall socket consumption of the equipment I've dealt with.

[ac29]

11kW is the figure for power consumption of the entire cell site, not RF output power. The same source gives about 7kW for a current 4G site.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/5g-base-stations-use-a-l...

[namibj]

Do keep in mind that those ~20 W typically apply to a single MIMO band (so, 10 W +45 deg linear polarization, 10 W -45 deg linear polarization, for a, say, 120 deg wide and 5-20 deg high sector). One eNodeB can have multiple frequency bands, that are aggregated when communicating with a recent high-end smartphone. Of course this restricts deployments where humans can easily walk up to the antenna, but these power levels are only worth it for long-range scenarios.

The 11 kW seem realistic when you take a multi-sector mast that fills 200 MHz TDD with 1W/Mhz in 3 separate 120 deg sectors (600W), at least once you include the compute to handle aggregate data at a realistic maximum spectral efficiency of ~10 (bit/s)/Hz (6 Gbit/s). These power amplifiers are typically between 10 and 40% efficiency.