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.
Please see summary at GreenNet 2024 homepage.
GreenNet 2022: 1st International Workshop on Network Energy Efficiency in the Softwarization Era (GreenNet 2022), co-located with the IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft 2022) Milan, 27 June - 1 July 2022
GreenNet 2023: 2nd International Workshop on Green and Sustainable Networking, co-located with the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2023), Rome, Italy, 28 May - 1 June 2023
GreenNet 2024: 3rd International Workshop on Green and Sustainable Networking, co-located with the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2024), Denver, CO, USA, 9 - 13 June 2024