In 2015, all United Nations Member States adopted the 2030 agenda for a sustainable future with 17 goals for sustainable development. These goals form a basis of different flagship projects towards a sustainable, energy efficient, but also high-performing 6th generation mobile network (6G). Considerable actions have been and are currently undertaken toward greener networks and ICT in general. In this context, the general question on how future networks can reduce the carbon footprint arises at a first glance. However, also other challenges like resource consumption or environmental pollution by many low-cost end devices must be taken into consideration in future networks. Worldwide initiatives like GSMA Mobile Net Zero, UN’s Race To Zero, and the Climate Pledge are growing, grouping major telecommunication providers towards the double objective of achieving carbon neutral network infrastructures and of helping third-party sectors’ sustainability. Tackling these issues is one major task for network researchers and engineers in the current decade.
From a network service providers’ point of view, different new challenges arise. For example, intelligent and flexible approaches are required to turn certain hardware on and off based on user and network demands, currently available renewable energy, and service load. In addition to network management and service monitoring, energy management solutions are required. This leads to a more efficient usage of cloud and edge solutions with traffic offloading closer to the user on the one hand, but also task orchestration on the other hand. Furthermore, a suitable trade-off must be reached between expensive, high-power, but also resource consuming new hardware and software solutions like virtual network functions (VNFs). Lastly, the coexistence of different access technologies like cellular, Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWANs), WiFi, as well as satellite communications and networking must be studied to improve energy efficiency. By intelligent access traffic steering, switching, and splitting (ATSSS) and the usage of AI/ML in wired and wireless access networks, including 5G and 6G networks, the end user quality demands must be met. For these reasons, to tackle these challenges, ideas and research in a multitude of different areas are required and most innovative solutions must be further developed for a productive use in industry.
The 2nd International Workshop on Green and Sustainable Networking is the second version of the successful 1st International Workshop on Network Energy Efficiency in the Softwarization Era (GreenNet 2022), co-located with the IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft 2022) Milan, 27 June - 01. July 2022.
The aim of the GreenNet 2023 Workshop is to explore some of the issues that this evolution poses on finding suitable traffic and power models, as well as management and control strategies, along with Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to be used for the lifecycle management and optimization of VNFs and the creation and dynamic reconfiguration of network slices, to match as closely as possible the desired balance between sustainability in terms of energy consumption and capacity performance. Furthermore, the goal is to not only consider an energy-efficient and sustainable access network but complete network, monitoring, and management solutions from data generation to data processing and further usage. These topics have received a good deal of attention in recent years. However, the organizers believe that much research work still needs to be done. Furthermore, a lively exchange of ideas between academia and industry is a key driver to foster the adaption of the ideas.
Please also see our webpage for further information: GreenNet2023
