BUSINESS IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF SELF-GROWING ENERGY EFFICIENT SYSTEMS

This paper investigates the business impact of two novel mechanisms that increase the energy efficiency of networks, i.e. sensor network decentralisation and system idle time estimation, which have been developed in the CONSERN project. The analysis consists of two distinct but interrelated phases, the objective of which is to combine a techno-economic analysis of actual gains as contained within the technical KPIs of optimisation techniques, with a strategic analysis of factors promoting or hindering the actual introduction of these mechanisms within mobile business ecosystems. In the first phase, the technical gains of the two mechanisms are translated into an estimation of Operational Expenditure (OPEX) savings for a number of typical configurations. Subsequently, a business impact assessment is performed, in which two commercial deployment modes – an operator based and operator independent mode – are outlined. After having drawn up the business ecosystem for these two deployment models, a number of business opportunities and challenges for the two mechanisms in the different deployment modes are identified using the business model framework developed by Ballon, and a scorecard is used to weigh the importance of the various business model parameters against each other. The paper concludes with some recommendations and steps to mitigate disjunctions and improve synergies between the key stakeholders, constituting a sustainable business ecosystem

Research challenges on energy-efficient networking design

The networking research community has started looking into key questions on energy efficiency of communication networks. The European Commission activated under the FP7 the TREND Network of Excellence with the goal of establishing the integration of the EU research community in green networking with a long perspective to consolidate the European leadership in the field. TREND integrates the activities of major European players in networking, including manufacturers, operators, research centers, to quantitatively assess the energy demand of current and future telecom infrastructures, and to design energy-efficient, scalable and sustainable future networks. This paper describes the main results of the TREND research community and concludes with a roadmap describing the next steps for standardization, regulation agencies and research in both academia and industry.The research leading to these results has received funding from the EU 7th Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013) under Grant Agreement No. 257740 (NoE TREND)

The self-growing concept - a novel framework developed by the FP7 CONSERN project

The CONSERN project (COoperative aNd Self growing Energy awaRe Networks) develops the novel Self-Growing concept. It is part of the European Commission's FP7 research initiative focusing on the following two major research directions: i) Solutions for optimised energy and power consumption in a small scale, purpose-driven network through balancing autonomic and cooperative approaches and ii) mechanisms for the self-evolvement of the network towards a large-scale, multi-purpose network. This paper will detail mechanisms developed within CONSERN that allow an on-going integration of existing networks in an ever-growing, complex environment, applying continuous self-optimization mechanisms and guaranteeing a minimized level of power-consumption, resource usage efficiency