About project

Power consumption of ICT has become a key issue in the last few years, due to rising energy cost and serious environment impacts on Green House Gases (GHG) emissions. Pollution and energy savings are keywords that are becoming more and more of interest of people and of governments, and the research community as well is more sensible toward these topics in the last years. As important part of the ICT consumption, the energy consumption of wireless access networks is rapidly increasing and in some countries it amounts for more than 55% of the whole communication sector. Such increase also accounts to a non negligible part of the operational expenditures (OPEX) of network equipment owners. Growth of data rates in wireless networks by a factor of roughly 10 every 5 years and increase in the number of users, results in a doubling of the energy consumption of wireless networks infrastructure every 4-5 years. Moreover, due to negative effects caused by increase in the GHG emissions of network devices (base stations, access points…), necessity for development of more energy efficient wireless networks gain momentum.

Therefore, six-months doctoral research visit on “Green networking“ project has been focused on solving the problem of permanent increase in energy consumption of network devices in the wireless access networks. Majority of the research activities on the project have been done in Advanced Network Technologies Laboratory (ANTLab) of the most reputable Italian technical university, Politecnico di Milano. This university is now ranked as one of the most outstanding European universities in engineering, architecture and industrial design, and in many disciplines is regarded as a leading research institution worldwide. Project leader participate on this project with experienced team of international researchers led by professor Antonio Capone, Ph.D., which is one of the best world experts in the area of optimization in telecommunications.

Project aim to indicate possible reductions in energy consumption of wireless communication devices (access points, base stations, etc.) on the level of complete network using principles of optimization theory. Our starting hypothesis is that there is opportunity for substantial reductions in the energy consumption of existing networks due to two factors. First, networks are provisioned for worst-case or busy-hour load, and this load typically exceeds their long-term utilization by a wide margin. Second, the energy consumption of network equipment remains prominent even when the network is idle. The implication of these two factors is that most of the energy consumed in networks is wasted. Therefore, main idea explored during project is that energy savings can be achieved if parts or all components of some wireless network devices are powered off when traffic is low, and powered on based on the volume and location of user demand. To achieve this for large-scale wireless networks without hampering coverage and/or client performance, energy efficient management of network resources must be implemented in future wireless systems.

Research activities on this project have huge significance for network operators, network equipment manufacturers and whole community. Network operators can benefit through lower financial costs paid due to less energy consumed by their network infrastructure. Since contemporary state-of-the-art technology solutions rarely supports energy efficient wireless networking, manufacturers of network equipment can enhance profit and market position through introduction of energy efficient solutions in their products. Finally, minimization of energy consumption results with more rational exploration of electrical energy which is limited resource and in lowering of green house gas emissions.