From Macro Base Station to Edge Box: Transforming Heat Sink Requirements in Communication Network Evolution
Communication networks are one of the largest and most stable app stores for hardware heat sinks, and their demand patterns are fundamentally changing with the deep deployment of 5G and the pre-research of 6G. In 2026, the cumulative deployment of 5G base stations worldwide has exceeded 8 million, and the shipment of edge computing devices is growing at a rate of 35% per year. These two forces are pulling the design boundaries of heat sinks from the two directions of "high-power centralized heat dissipation" and "miniaturized zero-noise heat dissipation".
Although the single-channel power consumption of the radio frequency unit of the 5G macro base station continues to be optimized, the number of channels of the large-scale MIMO antenna array has evolved from 64T64R to 128T128R, and the total power consumption of the whole machine has not decreased but increased, and the AAU heat dissipation is under continuous pressure. The new base station heat dissipation solution has evolved from a simple aluminum shell heat dissipation to a three-layer heat transfer architecture of "shell-heat sink-heat pipe". The inner layer uses a die-cast aluminum shell embedded with a heat pipe to quickly conduct the heat of the power amplifier chip to the middle of the shell; the outer shell conducts natural convection heat dissipation through a large area of the shovel tooth heat sink array. It is worth noting that as 5G base stations increasingly focus on bionic design and concealed installation, heat sinks are being required to be designed in coordination with the radomes, and the blade height, pitch, and color must meet municipal planning requirements. This brings industrial design attributes to heat sinks.
At the same time, the large number of millimeter wave stations and street stations has created a demand for ultra-low, high-density heat sinks. Such stations are installed in narrow spaces such as street light poles and bus stops, and the thickness of the whole machine is usually less than 80mm, leaving less than 30mm for the height of the heat sink. Traditional aluminum extrusion heat sinks are difficult to provide sufficient surface area at such a low height, so a heat dissipation structure called "tiled needle fin" has emerged. It uses friction stir welding to weld thousands of 1.5mm diameter and 25mm height copper needles directly to the aluminum plate to form a forest-like heat dissipation surface, with an area expansion ratio of 2.3 times that of traditional profiles.
Edge computing devices represent the heat dissipation needs of the other pole - fanless, completely silent, and extremely small size. A typical roadside edge AI box needs to process 8 high-resolution video streams, and the peak power consumption of the internal module can reach 60W, but the whole machine must be sealed and dustproof and operate with zero noise. This requires a passive solution of natural convection + high-radiation coating for the heat sink. In 2026, the penetration rate of graphene radiant heat dissipation coating in the edge computing heat sink has exceeded 30%, and the coating is in 8
~
13μm大气窗口波段具有接近黑体的辐射率，可使密封腔体内的元器件温度额外降低5~7℃，成为无风扇设计的使能技术。此外，部分厂家开始尝试将整个铝制外壳的上
The cover is directly formed into a heat sink by cold forging, and the internal heat sink and thermal conductivity interface material are cancelled. The heat dissipation path is compressed into three steps of "chip-shell-environment", and the thermal resistance is reduced by about 18%.
The heat sink of communication equipment is moving from the background to the foreground. It is no longer a simple universal part, but a key design element deeply coupled to system-level requirements such as base station overall scheme, municipal appearance, fanless mute, etc. The heat sink supplier that can understand the system thermal design language of communication customers and co-emulate antennas, filters, and heat sink housings will occupy the high end of the value chain.
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