Korean SK Telecom has worked with Ericsson to develop Smart Wake-up, a technology that dynamically wakes up small cells when traffic enters the cell, improving operational efficiency. Smart Wake-Up is a new technology to control the operation of idle base stations during late night and early morning. Through intelligent operation control, the base station will be turned off when no mobile phone is detected within the cell boundary, but if any device comes into the coverage then the base station will automatically sense it and reactivate itself.

With the support of Smart Wake-Up, decreased number of active base stations will reduce interference between cells and therefore speed up the data transmission between base stations and devices.

Applying the technology, SK Telecom expects to save operating costs of base stations and enhance durability of networking equipment by mitigating power waste of inactive base stations while improving energy-efficiency of networks.

In the recent tests of the technology, SK Telecom confirmed that use of Smart Wake-Up increased data throughput by 18% and reduced power consumption of the base station by 21% while still providing seamless service by reactivating the cell if detected access by a terminal.