Communications of the ACM
Networks in 2020: More Traffic, Less Energy
The GreenTouch consortium is predicting that networks in 2020 will consume far less energy than they do today, even as they carry a great deal more traffic.
Credit: PC World
New technologies will enable networks to use much less energy by 2020 even though they will be carrying much more traffic, according to the GreenTouch consortium.
"There is potential with these new technologies to support the traffic growth and still make the energy consumption go down," says GreenTouch chairman Theirry Klein. He says the tools that will make this possible include new devices, components, algorithms, architectures, and protocols.
Companies that are part of the GreenTouch consortium also are developing other technologies that could drive even greater efficiency. GreenTouch's findings are promising and could become real, but there are too many green-network initiatives in play today, says Frost & Sullivan analyst Saverio Romeo.
GreenTouch reached its conclusions based on forecasts that the amount of traffic on wireless networks will have multiplied 88 times between 2010 and 2020. "For the most part, the energy consumption of the equipment is at the peak power, or very close to the peak power...even when there is no load," Klein notes. However, GreenTouch has identified ways to solve that problem by making networks more adaptive, so components or entire systems can be shut down when not needed.
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