This paper proposes a novel ventilation cooling system of communication base station (CBS), which combines with the chimney ventilation and the air conditioner cooling. Stack effect is employed to enhance the air flow and remove more heat. Effective control strategy is established to reduce the operating cost. Firstly three-dimensional (3-D) thermal fluid field calculation was conducted to compare and analyze the cooling performance of three models of CBS, and the contribution of stack effect on the ventilation cooling of CBS was verified. On this basis, the mechanical field was used to study the stability of the chimney with the basic wind pressure in 50 years. Some suggestions were advanced for the fixed measures of the chimney. After the analysis and identification of key factors affecting ventilation cooling, the junction temperature of the heating device was set to be the optimized target, and orthogonal experiment design (OED) was utilized for the optimization of the cooling structure parameters of CBS. At last, the same experimental parameters were applied to a real-world system to validate the simulation results, which showed the greatest decrease in the indoor temperature of CBS when the stability of the chimney was maintained. Engineering application of this system has achieved the economic and social benefits, and more than 50% of power consumption of the air conditioner has been saved. It provides effective technical support for energy saving and emission reduction of CBS. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.