Green Communications and Networking

Excerpt

The worldwide growing energy demands together with the increasing depletion of fossil fuels have been recognized as a major challenge that needs to be urgently addressed by society in order to have a sustainable future. To investigate new technologies that can enable a transition towards a more sustainable society with a reduced carbon footprint is of prime importance. It is well understood that ICT is one of the keys to a future low-carbon and sustainable society. Communications technologies will be critical to achieving large-scale energy savings in all domains including communications, manufacturing, transportation, buildings, and electricity generation and distribution. In this context, there is a critical need for new ways of reducing energy consumption of communication and networking systems if the current trajectory of traffic growth and supporting anywhere/anytime/anything access is to continue unabated. Energy costs are significant in a broad range of communications networks ranging from data center networks (where network equipment consume about 15 % of the overall energy used) to cellular networks (where energy use of base stations amounts to around 70 % of the total). The need for ‘greener’ communications and networking technologies has been recognized by the research community as demonstrated by the significant research efforts in this area during the last years. However, many challenges still remain to be addressed. …