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Eco-efficiency indicator: An operator's energy performance indicator
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In the last ten years, the telecom Operators have made strong actions towards an ever more efficient use of the energy and to its reduction. As the network architecture was stable (service from the Central Office), the effect of these actions was easily measurable. The Next Generation Network (NGN) the Operators are aiming to, implies a completely different and highly distributed scenario, where most of the network equipment will be deployed in FTTCab -FTTB architecture. There is the need to define a method to analyze the energy performance behavior which should be both general and future proof. This method should be applicable both to the current network and to the NGN, assuring a constant and reliable assessment. The proposed method takes into account the ratio between the service delivered (in terms of bits) and the total energy used by the Operator (Joules). Telecom Italia is developing a comprehensive Indicator representing its Fixed and Mobile networks performance. The energy sources taken into account are: industrial (energy used by the network plants), civil (offices, lighting) and fuels (car and heating fuel). The document will depict the results of the application of such an Indicator to the Telecom Italia case. It will analyze its trend on 2003 -2006 period, detailing all the key factors and their mutual action on the final result.
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... Besides, ICT has been ranked as the fifth largest industry in terms of electrical power consumption corresponding to 2–6 % of the total energy consumed worldwide [15] . As an example, Telecom Italia is reported as the second largest consumer of electrical power in Italy after the railway system [16, 17]. In the European Union, recent statistics [18] revealed that ICT equipment and services consumed over 8 % of electrical power and produced about 4 % of its CO 2 emissions in 2010. ...
Pervasive broadband access will transform cities to the net social, environmental and economic benefit of the e-City dweller as did the introduction of utility and transport network infrastructures. Yet without action, the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions attributable to the increasing energy consumption of access networks will become a serious threat to the environment. This paper introduces the vision of a 'sustainable Digital City' and then considers strategies to overcome economic and technical hurdles faced by engineers responsible for developing the information and communications technology (ICT) network infrastructure of a Digital City. In particular, ICT energy consumption, already an issue from an operating cost perspective, is responsible for 3 % of global energy consumption and is growing unsustainably. A grand challenge is to conceive of networks, systems and devices that together can cap wireless network energy consumption whilst accommodating growth in the number of subscribers and the bandwidth of services. This paper provides some first research directions to tackle this grand challenge. A distributed antenna system with radio frequency (RF) transport over an optical fibre (or optical wireless in benign environments) distribution network is identified as best suited to wireless access in cluttered urban environments expected in a Digital City from an energy consumption perspective. This is a similar architecture to Radio-over-Fibre which, for decades, has been synonymous with RF transport over analogue intensity-modulated direct detection optical links. However, it is suggested herein that digital coherent optical transport of RF holds greater promise than the orthodox approach. The composition of the wireless and optical channels is then linear, which eases the digital signal processing tasks and permits robust wireless protocols to be used end-to-end natively which offers gains in terms of capacity and energy efficiency. The arguments are supported by simulation studies of distributed antenna systems and digital coherent Radio-over-Fibre links.
... As a first objective, network researchers and engineers certainly need standard performance metrics, reference benchmarking scenarios and methodologies in order to effectively evaluate and compare different green solutions and mechanisms. Preliminary studies in this respect were carried out by Telecom Italia [26] and Juniper [113] , which defined ecoefficiency indicators for evaluating entire telco's networks and single IP routers, respectively. Such indexes generally take into account the long-term ratio between the service delivered (e.g., in terms of bits) and the total energy used by the system under test (e.g., a network, a device, etc.). ...
The concept of energy-efficient networking has begun to spread in the past few years, gaining increasing popularity. Besides the widespread sensitivity to ecological issues, such interest also stems from economic needs, since both energy costs and electrical requirements of telcos' and Internet Service Providers' infrastructures around the world show a continuously growing trend. In this respect, a common opinion among networking researchers is that the sole introduction of low consumption silicon technologies may not be enough to effectively curb energy requirements. Thus, for disruptively boosting the network energy efficiency, these hardware enhancements must be integrated with ad-hoc mechanisms that explicitly manage energy saving, by exploiting network-specific features. This paper aims at providing a twofold contribution to green networking. At first, we explore current perspectives in power consumption for next generation networks. Secondly, we provide a detailed survey on emerging technologies, projects, and work-in-progress standards, which can be adopted in networks and related infrastructures in order to reduce their carbon footprint. The considered approaches range from energy saving techniques for networked hosts, to technologies and mechanisms for designing next-generation and energy-aware networks and networking equipment.
... As a first objective, network researchers and engineers certainly need standard performance metrics, reference benchmarking scenarios and methodologies in order to effectively evaluate and compare different green solutions and mechanisms. Preliminary studies in this respect were carried out by Telecom Italia [26] and Juniper [113], which defined ecoefficiency indicators for evaluating entire telco's networks and single IP routers, respectively. Such indexes generally take into account the long-term ratio between the service delivered (e.g., in terms of bits) and the total energy used by the system under test (e.g., a network, a device, etc.). ...
The concept of energy-efficient networking has begun
to spread in the past few years, gaining increasing popularity.
Besides the widespread sensitivity to ecological issues, such interest
also stems from economic needs, since both energy costs and
electrical requirements of telcos’ and Internet Service Providers’
infrastructures around the world show a continuously growing
trend. In this respect, a common opinion among networking
researchers is that the sole introduction of low consumption
silicon technologies may not be enough to effectively curb energy
requirements. Thus, for disruptively boosting the network energy
efficiency, these hardware enhancements must be integrated with
ad-hoc mechanisms that explicitly manage energy saving, by
exploiting network-specific features. This paper aims at providing
a twofold contribution to green networking. At first, we explore
current perspectives in power consumption for next generation
networks. Secondly, we provide a detailed survey on emerging
technologies, projects, and work-in-progress standards, which
can be adopted in networks and related infrastructures in order
to reduce their carbon footprint. The considered approaches
range from energy saving techniques for networked hosts, to
technologies and mechanisms for designing next-generation and
energy-aware networks and networking equipment.
In this paper, we investigate network sleep mode schemes for reducing energy consumption of radio access networks. We first propose, using Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), an optimal controller that associates to each traffic an activation/deactivation policy that maximizes a multiple objective function of the Quality of Service (QoS) and the energy consumption. We focus on a practical implementation issue, namely ping-pong effect resulting in unnecessary ON/OFF oscillations, that may affect the stability of the system. We illustrate our results numerically using theoretical models of the radio access network, and apply the developed mechanisms on a large-scale network simulator. Knowing that an offline optimization is not suitable for a large-scale network nor does it fit all traffic configurations, we propose, using an online controller that derives dynamically the optimal policy based on the dynamics of users in the cell. The design of our online controller is based on a simple ∊-greedy algorithm and learns the optimal threshold policy for activation/deactivation of network resources.
Since 2009, several emerging technologies have initiated broad and disruptive impact across the ICT sector: cloud computing promises efficiency of scale both in terms of capital and operational costs; high-speed wireless networks promise near-ubiquitous network access and thin-client solutions (smart-phones and tablets) provide appropriate, low power user- interfaces to take advantage of this emerging next-generation ICT infrastructure. But despite claims that this new consumer ICT infrastructure can reduce the overall energy costs of society s new digital lifestyle, there are few studies that encompass the total energy costs of consumer ICT devices and the supporting communications networks and associated data centers that have become so essential. This work brings together the work of many prior researchers, while also introducing a number of new methodological approaches to estimate growth in the portion of global electricity consumption that can be ascribed to digital consumer devices. Baseline estimates for the main categories of consumption - direct, manufacturing related, network-related and data-center related - are determined for 2012. A number of methodological approaches are outlined to extrapolate trends over the period 2013-2017 and projections based on best-case, expected and worst-case scenarios are provided.
In this paper, we focus on developing energy-efficient radio resource management (RRM) algorithms for heterogeneous networks. Our aim is to optimize energy consumption at the network scale, while preserving the quality of service (QoS) perceived by users. We develop a system selection algorithm that finds the optimal traffic allocation for the different systems that minimizes power consumption while insuring the target QoS. We apply our algorithm to a cooperative 2G/3G network and show that only a little gain can be obtained, as base stations still have a large energy consumption even if they have no traffic. We then propose a network scale "sleep mode" where an entire system (2G or 3G) can be desactivated for some traffic scenarios. We show that this mode, together with the energy-aware system selection, achieves large energy reductions.
Agreement on a significant eco-efficiency indicator for telecom operators
- Swisscom
Swisscom, Agreement on a significant eco-efficiency indicator for
telecom operators
Energy index-a methodology of quantifying and analyzing energy efficiency in the ICT sector
- Telia Sonera
Telia Sonera, Energy index-a methodology of quantifying and analyzing
energy efficiency in the ICT sector, 2006
A Manual for the Preparers and Users of Eco-efficiency Indicators, vers.1.1
United Nations, A Manual for the Preparers and Users of Eco-efficiency
Indicators, vers.1.1, New York and Geneva, 2004