Educational Tracks: Green ICT

Track 2: Green ICT

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Today’s networks are designed for optimal capacity, not efficient energy use. What is needed is a major breakthrough, a radical re-design of networks, and that can only be achieved through the contributions of all essential participants, from basic and applied researchers and component suppliers to network operators, equipment and system suppliers and governments. TIA and GreenTouch are teaming up to showcase next generation products and services, and develop a series of educational sessions devoted to innovative thinking in the area of energy efficient network equipment.

Green ICT Demo

ON THE EXHIBIT FLOOR



Visit the GreenTouch demo showing improvement of energy efficiency of wireless communications. Wireless is by far the least efficient communication technology, and yet the most popular. This effort will demonstrate that transmitted radio power can be significantly reduced as number of antenna elements is increased. Multiple antenna systems are not new; however, what distinguishes the GreenTouch wireless solution from other antenna systems and enables it to achieve such a significant reduction in power is the way in which it transmits signals.

Importantly, along with a large reduction in radiated power, signal strength and quality of service are maintained. In practical application together with advances in other wireless technologies, the potential benefits this technology could yield are immense.



Please Note: Sessions below are not yet final and are subject to change.
 



DAY ONE: Wednesday, June 6, 2012



8:00 – 10:30 am

Panel: How Energy will Shape the Future of ICT Networks

Worldwide broadband subscribers are expected to approach 1 billion by 2015. Mobile traffic is expected to increase more than 10 fold in the same period and wireline traffic will increase 10-fold over the next decade.  The carbon footprint of the network infrastructure, which expands with the Internet, must be contained and even reduced in the face of increasingly difficult challenges related to electronic and photonic component scaling. Keeping pace with network growth requires more than just incremental, business as usual improvements on the status quo. Scaling networks into the future will require new thinking, out-of-the box innovation, and end to end, holistic network change. This panel session evaluates the challenges and advanced technologies that will enable network equipment and access infrastructure to meet and exceed industry targets and achieve long term sustainability.

Attendee Take-Aways

  • Understand the major obstacles to sustainable network growth
  • Understand major R&D directions and solutions on energy efficient telecommunications
  • Understand how ICT networks will be impacted by energy demands and sustainability requirements

The panel discussion features individual presentations followed by an interactive question and answer session. The key focus areas for the session include:

Energy and Mobility: Scalable Solutions for the Mobile Data Explosion


Antonio Capone
 


Dr. Antonio Capone, Professor, Politecnico di Milano

Wireless access networks have to cope with a tremendous growth in capacity demand while remaining at fixed overall power consumption or even reduce compared with today’s level. For achieving this, several approaches are currently followed in research and engineering, such as improvements in power amplifiers, advanced antenna configurations, and network level reconfigurations. Network management solutions promise high gains in addition to other improvements by switching off cells and thus achieving a load dependency of the networks power consumption.

However, for realizing such solutions, the traditional cellular concept is a big limitation since it requires to provide full coverage of the service area regardless of the traffic level. We believe that in order to overcome this problem a paradigm shift for cellular networks architectures is required in the sense to separate signaling network and the data network.  Within GreenTouch consortium, the “Beyond Cellular Green Generations” (BCG²) project is working on the design of this new system architecture and facing the numerous research challenges arising from it. In this presentation, we give an overview on the project and introduce to research challenges.

Moving Toward Energy Efficient Access Networks


Peter Vetter
 


Peter Vetter, Principal Research Engineer, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs

The wireline access network is the second largest consumer of energy in the network after wireless and hence an important focus area for research on efficiency improvements. The purpose is to discuss a research roadmap of energy saving concepts for wireline access networks and assess their respective effect on the total average power consumption per subscriber. The talk will also provide background to some of the concepts that are demonstrated at the GreenTouch booth in the exhibition. Key concepts to be explored in this talk are:

  • Breakdown of the power consumption in a copper or fiber access network
  • Understanding energy saving measures for the access network on a short term, such as e.g. sleep mode in passive optical networks (PON) or spectral optimization in digital subscriber lines (DSL), as well as their status in standardization
  • Directions for medium to longer term oriented research with examples at access network architecture, protocol, and component level

Charting a Path to Sustainable and Scalable ICT Networks

Professor Rod Tucker, Director, Institute of Broadband-Enabled Society, University of Melbourne

Energy consumption has always been an important consideration in ICT network design. Since the very early days, advances in computer and telecommunications technology have been enabled by or accompanied by improvements in energy efficiency. These improvements have traditionally been driven by thermal engineering considerations such as the need to control the temperature of silicon chips, or the need to ensure that racks of ICT equipment can be cooled efficiently, and the waste heat can be removed. But in the past few years, the ICT industry has become aware that as the scale and capacity of the global ICT infrastructure continues to grow, the energy consumption of this infrastructure is also expanding rapidly and is consuming an ever-increasing fraction of the world’s electricity. This focuses the question of energy in ICT networks on questions of global sustainability. The issue of energy consumption in ICT networks now takes on increased importance in our energy-constrained world.

This presentation explores the question of how ICT networks can be scaled to meet an ever-increasing demand for more, while at the same time constraining the growth in their energy consumption. In today’s ICT networks, the bulk of the network energy is consumed in the switching infrastructure and the access network.  In addition, a rapidly growing component of energy is used in data storage and content delivery. Significant short- to medium-term gains can be achieved through improvements in the access network and through improve data center design.  But in the longer term, new network architectures will be needed to minimize the quantity of switching infrastructure in the network and to ensure that data is stored and processed in optimum locations.  Future research needs to focus on improving the energy efficiency of switching and on devising methods to reduce the energy overheads associated with peripheral functions that are not central to the transport and switching of data.

Green from a Service Provider Perspective

Dr. ChihLin I, Chief Scientist of Wireless Technologies, China Mobile Research Institute

This speech will share CMCC’s experience in making the mobile communications network “Green”, and its view of future challenges and opportunities in high energy efficiency technologies, specifically highlighting:

  • Green Action Plan - The key initiatives of China Mobile to reduce power consumption and CO2 emissions, including not only the technical solutions for improving mobile network power efficiency, but also green services for society
  • Base station powered by Solar, Wind, and Water - Introducing the renewable energy and fuel cell hybrid power solution for BTS in off-grid scenario, i.e., powered by Solar, Wind and Water without traditional electricity and with zero emissions
  • C-RAN - a Green Radio Access Network implementation and deployment solution that features "Centralized Processing," "Collaborative Radio," "Real-Time Cloud Computing," and "Clean Systems." The solution was proposed by CMRI in 2010 after two years of internal research on challenges of mobile Internet era and the limitations of current RAN networks, and has been widely recognized by major mobile operators worldwide
  • Signaling convergence in heterogeneous network - Focusing on the preliminary power saving solutions based on multi-radio access technologies

DAY TWO: Thursday, June 7, 2012

2:30 – 5:00 pm

Panel: Green Networks and Sustainability

Communication technologies provide powerful tools that can enable us to better monitor and control energy use across society. Smart technologies are changing the way we think about and manage our energy use. Using networks to facilitate these benefits starts with addressing the carbon of the ICT equipment and devices themselves. This panel session will examine the how ICT networks can both enable low carbon solutions for all of us as well as be implemented and used in sustainable ways.

Attendee Take-Aways

  • Understand issues and strategies around low carbon networks, devices, and data centers
  • Learn how ICT networks can enable smart and sustainable solutions

The panel discussion features individual presentations followed by an interactive Q&A session. The key focus areas for the session include:

A Green Platform Solution

Sanjay Bhatia, Director of Product Marketing, GENBAND

There is a dramatic shift in communications underway with the proliferation of smart devices, increase in broadband penetration and a seemingly insatiable demand for applications, collaboration and multimedia. This is driving a transformation of the underlying networks to all IP and provides a great opportunity for service providers to implement Green technologies, platforms and network architectures for future sustainability while at the same time benefitting from significantly upgraded IP technology, reliability and scale.
This presentation will introduce platform solutions and provide a view of the type of dramatic savings that can be attained with the implementation of an advanced platform and technology solution. The presentation will also provide a view of the significant additional Green benefits that can be obtained by optimizing existing legacy networks as part of the overall network transformation.

Attendee Take-Aways

  • Hear example of an innovative Green network platform solution
  • Understand how network architecture can deliver network-wide savings metrics in power, footprint and other key attributes

Green Content Distribution and Data Centers



Jay Taylor
 

Jay Taylor, Director, Global Standards, Codes and Environment, Schneider Electric (representing GreenGrid)

Abstract pending

Is Solar Power Ready to Answer the Call at Remote Sites? 

Jason Higginson, Sales & Marketing Manager, Eltek

Demand for mobile broadband devices and new wireline cloud and entertainment services are rapidly expanding the power consumption at remote telecom sites. The energy needed to power the telecom equipment for these services is a significant portion of operating expenses for carriers, and the heat and CO2 emissions from energy wasted by inefficient equipment are becoming increasingly detrimental to the environment. In rural areas, off-grid and poor grid sites are using large amounts of diesel fuel to provide back-up power to cell towers. As a result, carriers are increasingly considering solar power as an option for powering remote sites.
This presentation will cover several case studies where solar power systems have been used.  One of the key challenges is maximizing the power efficiency of the PV panels to deliver enough power while minimizing the CAPEX cost. Another key issue that will be discussed is how to integrate the solar power sources with mains and other back up power sources.

Attendee Take-Aways

  • Learn how solar power is playing a role as a back-up power source at remote sites and also when it is appropriate to be used
  • Demonstrate the benefits of using solar power combined with high efficiency DC power systems to power telecom sites, which provides significant energy cost cuts, saves the environment by lowering the amount of CO2 waste and fossil fuel consumption and frees up energy to power new services

Using ICT Networks to Enable Sustainable Solutions


Roman Smith
 


Roman Smith, Director-Public Affairs, Corporate Citizenship & Sustainability, AT&T – representing GeSI

From cloud computing to smart buildings, the ICT sector has consistently delivered innovative products and services that are fast becoming an integral part of everyday life. Future service delivery in sectors such as health, education, energy and transportation will all rely on ICT solutions. But what impact do pervasive ICT products have on the environment? What role do they play in tackling climate change globally?
The Global e-Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), a strategic partnership of the ICT sector and international organisations, has spent over a decade examining the complex relationship between ICT and sustainability. Roman Smith will introduce GeSI’s activities and research in the climate change area, and engage participants in a lively debate on what is needed to fully tap into the potential of ICT to enable the transition to a low-carbon economy.

Attendee Take-Aways

  • Hear the latest research findings on the impact of ICT in reducing carbon emissions and improving energy efficiency
  • Better understand the role of different stakeholders including policy-makers in enabling the transition to a low-carbon economy through ICT