Wireless access strategies for carbon-neutral networks

在过去的几十年里，信息和通信技术（ICT）行业的产品和服务的广泛和不间断的增长，以及它们在人类活动的所有部门中无处不在，已经导致了ICT行业全球碳排放足迹的重大后果。虽然这一足迹目前不到全球排放量的4%，但它每四年翻一番。另一方面，信息通信技术行业提供了一种很大程度上尚未开发的能力，每年可产生8000亿美元的能效收益，并减少15%的全球温室气体排放，这相当于美国或中国的总排放量，从而在21世纪的碳限制经济中创造了巨大的经济机会。该研究计划的目标是在可再生能源可用性的背景下，将云计算和虚拟化原则应用于电信网络，以减少这些ICT基础设施的碳足迹，同时提高其经济可行性。无线接入的虚拟化将成为特别关注的焦点，因为与网络主干网和应用程序的虚拟化相比，它在开放文献中受到的关注相对较少。特别提出了将认知无线电原理应用于无线电接入的虚拟化，以便充分利用频谱资源并在可用时最大限度地利用这些资源。还将研究无线电环境地图，以支持虚拟无线电接入环境中的认知功能。这一综合性的研究项目有望为加拿大电信的未来做出开创性的成果，并为培养具有技术能力和远见的高素质人才做出贡献，将绿色ICT原则作为21世纪数字和碳限制经济的基础。

The broad and uninterrupted growth, during the last few decades, of the products and services of the information and communications technologies (ICT) industry as well as their omnipresence throughout all sectors of human activity, has lead to significant consequences with respect to the ICT industry's global carbon emission footprint. While this footprint is currently under 4% of global emissions, it is doubling every four years. On the other hand, the ICT industry offers a largely undevelopped capability to generate energy efficiency gains of 800 billion US dollars per year as well as to eliminate 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is equivalent to all emissions of the USA or of China thus creating a huge economic opportunity in the 21st century, carbon-constrained economy. The research program will target the application to telecommunications networks, in the context of the availability of renewable energy resources, of cloud computing and virtualization principles in order to reduce the carbon footprint of these ICT infrastructures while at the same time improving their economic viability. Virtualization of wireless access will be the specific focus as it has received relatively little attention in the open literature compared to virtualization of network backbones and applications. It is notably proposed to apply cognitive radio principles to virtualization of radio access in order to adequately spectral resources and to maximize the use of such resources when they are available. Radio environment maps will also be examined in order to support cognitive functions in a virtualized radio access environment. This comprehensive research program is expected to contribute to groundbreaking outcomes for Canada's telecommunications future and to the training of highly qualified personnel with the technical competence and the vision to use such Green ICT principles as the basis for the 21st century, digital and carbon-constrained economy.