Workshop on ‘Green and Sustainable Networking’ (GreenNet’24) at the International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2024
The GreenNet workshop series focuses on the question of how energy consumption and the sustainability of future networks can be improved, and how communication networks and systems can increase sustainability. In addition to reducing the CO2 footprint and the consumption of resources and energy, the focus will be on technical solutions and their positive impact on sustainability.
This year's workshop centered on novel network, management, monitoring, and processing technologies, such as task offloading or approaches for sustainable networks with Network-Controlled Repeaters (NCR) and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) in 6G. This includes suitable traffic and energy models, especially for 5G and 6G RANs. However, MDMA-based approaches, chirp spread spectrum modulation, Manchester-coded on-off keying towards zero-energy devices, NB-IoT and IEEE 802.11ah networks were also investigated. Another focus was on the optimization of networks, in particular through machine learning, for example, for cell selection and cell switching. The emissions of federated learning or adversarial machine learning itself were also considered. The organizers were very pleased with the high level of interest in the workshop. The workshop lasted two days. 37 papers were submitted and 17 of them were accepted.
Outstanding keynote speeches and invited industry talks enriched the program with diverse expert knowledge. John Cioffi (Stanford) gave interesting insights into the use of the frequency spectrum and emphasized the importance of reusing current solutions for further development. Mischa Dohler (Ericsson) and Anwer Al-Dulaimi (Veltris) spoke about developments towards 6G from an industrial perspective. Both speakers stressed the importance of having a holistic understanding of networks, data traffic, and systems in order to find better solutions. Mischa Dohler pointed out that the increase in load due to technologies such as artificial intelligence or augmented reality will be greater than we expect today. Anwer Al-Dulaimi emphasized that moving everything to the cloud may not be the solution, as this is not always the most energy-efficient option. Michael Welzl (University of Oslo) spoke critically in his keynote '7G Should be Software' that it is not only important to improve network capacities, but also to keep metrics such as latency or jitter constantly at high quality. Intelligent, new approaches are needed to solve these problems.
A highlight of the workshop was an interactive panel of experts from industry and academia who discussed how networks can be made more energy-efficient and sustainable in the age of 6G. It was emphasized that a holistic view of the networks, from the access network to the data center, is essential. The production and disposal of end devices, which have a significant impact on the energy balance, must also be considered.
At the end of the workshop, the Best Paper Award was presented to Sofia C Martins, Ana C Aguiar (University of Porto) and Peter Steenkiste (Carnegie Mellon University) for their work on the development of a methodology and testbed to create an energy model for 5G virtualized RANs. We congratulate them on this outstanding work.
We would like to thank the IEEE ICC, especially the ICC Workshop Chairs Janise McNair, JaeSeung Song, Yuanqiu Luo, as well as the members of the GreenNet Program Committee for their valuable contributions to the success of the workshop.
The organizers are pleased about the great interest in the workshop, but still see a need for further research and emphasize the importance of the exchange between science and industry. A GreenNet'25 workshop is therefore already being planned.
Co-Chairs ICC GreenNet‘24