The future of sustainable ICT requires more than just technical advancements—it needs a robust, intelligent architecture that bridges multiple domains and delivers real impact. That’s exactly what this deliverable sets out to define. In D1.3: Draft Functional Architecture, the EXIGENCE project introduces a high-level architectural blueprint designed to reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions across ICT systems.
This isn’t just another framework. The EXIGENCE architecture is a forward-thinking system built to monitor, assess, and optimise energy performance in real time, across the entire ICT stack—from infrastructure providers to application service domains, and down to the end user.
At the core of this architecture lies a powerful concept: EXIGENCE Agents. These agents act as smart energy monitors and orchestrators, embedded within each domain, capable of collecting, analysing, and forwarding energy consumption data. By enabling seamless communication between agents, the architecture offers a way to construct an end-to-end picture of energy use, allowing decisions to be based not on abstract estimates, but on verifiable, actionable data.
Why it matters?
This architecture is not domain-specific—and that’s its strength. In a digital ecosystem where cloud, edge, mobile, and enterprise networks often belong to different operators and legal entities, EXIGENCE recognises the importance of interoperability. It acknowledges the challenge of cross-domain transparency and provides mechanisms for harmonising data exchange and energy orchestration without imposing control.
This report goes beyond presenting a technical structure. It:
- Maps architectural elements to real-world use cases like media streaming, AI service scheduling, and carbon-aware orchestration.
- Defines service ecodata flows, exposing energy metrics to authorised users and enabling eco-informed decision-making.
- Introduces energy optimisation hints and predictive energy estimations to empower stakeholders across the value chain.
By enabling transparent, fair, and actionable energy reporting, this architecture creates a foundation upon which future incentive systems, policies, and optimisations can be built. It sets the stage for a greener digital world where sustainability is not an afterthought—but an embedded, traceable metric across services. This is a critical step toward operationalising energy-awareness at scale. And it’s only the beginning.
Stay tuned, the full report will soon be available.
References
EXIGENCE, “EXIGENCE Green ICT DIGEST – start page,” [Online]. Available: https://projectexigence.eu/green-ict-digest/. [Accessed 12 December 2024].
- 3GPP, “Technical Specification Group Services and System Aspects; Management and orchestration; 5G end to end Key Performance Indicators (KPI) (Release 18) V18.7.0,” September 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/archive/28_series/28.554/28554-i70.zip. [Accessed 10 December 2024]
- 3GPP, “Technical Specification Group Services and System Aspects; Study on Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving (Release 19),” September 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/archive/23_series/23.700-66/23700-66-j00.zip. [Accessed 10 December 2024].
- ITU-T, “L.1390: Energy saving technologies and best practices for 5G radio access network (RAN) equipment,” 13 August 2022. [Online]. Available: https://www.itu.int/rec/dologin_pub.asp?lang=e&id=T-REC-L.1390-202208-I!!PDF-E&type=items.
- ETSI GS PDL 012–013: .D.-L. S. (n.d.), “PDL,” [Online]. Available: https://www.etsi.org/committee/pdl.
- NGMN Alliance, “Green Future Networks Metering for Sustainable Networks,” 2022.
Author
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Panagiotis Kontopoulos is a Research Associate at the Software Centric & Autonomic Networking (SCAN) Lab of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (UoA), where he also pursues his Ph.D. in Informatics and Telecommunications with a focus on Artificial Intelligence, Telecommunications, and Networks. He earned his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in the same field from UoA. His expertise lies in Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Software-Defined Wireless Local Area Networking (SDWLAN), distributed systems, and mobile communication systems for future networks.
