Methodology & Solutions
Coming soon
EXIGENCE Methodology
Optimising Energy Consumption in ICT Services at the heart of the project is a straightforward but crucial goal. EXIGENCE focuses on measuring energy consumption at the service level—a critical step since current live service measurements in the ICT domain are limited. Instead of optimising individual domains in isolation, EXIGENCE aims to prioritise the community’s overall efficiency by involving service users in the process. By raising awareness of the energy impact of their actions and providing tools to make informed choices, EXIGENCE will empower users to actively reduce their carbon footprint. This collaborative approach, which includes creating incentives for both users and providers, will ensure that energy consumption is reduced across the board.
Given the projected 6-10x increase in demand over the next 5-6 years, domain-level optimisations alone won’t be enough. We’ll need a service-level focus that offload carbon footprints from providing domains to users, helping to balance any potential inefficiencies.Through this approach, we aim to achieve a more sustainable, community-wide impact, optimising not just for individual domains but for the service as a whole.
- Measuring energy consumption at the service level.
- Involving users by raising awareness and providing tools to make informed choices.
- Optimising for the broader community rather than individual domains.
- Creating incentives to drive active participation from both users and providers.
- Preparing for future increases in demand by shifting the focus towards comprehensive service-level optimisation.
Ecosystem & Use Cases
Media Streaming – From basic streaming to incentivising eco-friendly user behaviour
- UC1: Media Streaming carbon footprint transparency
The total amount of Energy and CO2e in the end2end chain for Media Streaming is made available to the end user.
- UC2: Digital sobriety
Similar to UC1. In addition the end user gets the option to effectively reduce his carbon footprint.
- UC3: Economic incentives for digital sobriety
This use case builds on the information provided by UC2 to devise and apply effective ways in which users can be properly motivated by means economic incentives in order to decrease the carbon footprint which they are accountable for.
- UC4: Behavioral incentives for digital sobriety
This use case expands on the data from UC2 to create and deploy effective non-monetary incentives, empowering users to take responsibility for and reduce their carbon footprint.
- UC5: Watch TV over 5G/6G
Similar to UC1. In addition the end user wants to see content on TV. The TV is connected via Wi-Fi with the 5G/6G phone’s hotspot that connects the TV to the TV service.
- UC6: Any service provider get EC and CO2 data for the end2end chain
Similar to UC1. In addition all Service Providers in the end2end chain will receive the EC and CO2e data.
- UC9: Physical security in industry
An AI application continuously monitors a surveillance camera’s video stream for unusual activity. To optimise performance, the system adapts video encoding and network configurations. These adjustments influence power consumption, which is tracked and reported for the complete system.
Green Batch Processing – Postponing non-urgent tasks to times of greener energy availability
- UC10: Carbon-aware AI (or batch) service providing and control
This use case involves distributing and executing AI models (training or inference) across diverse, resource-constrained nodes. Tasks are intelligently partitioned and assigned based on available compute, memory, and renewable energy, resulting in a more sustainable AI service.
- UC13: Carbon-aware pre-population of CDN nods
In this use case, carbon-aware content replication schedules a replication step when the energy/CO2e impact is minimal or even zero.
- UC15: Green social media and e-mail Content Download
This use case aims to reduce the carbon impact of instant messaging and email services by postponing the download of attachments (i.e., the bulk of the data) to a moment in time when both the energy mix is and/or the radio signal conditions are favorable.
Green Real Time Scheduling – Utilising computational power that is greener than others
- UC11: Energy profiling on network device
This use case creates energy profiles for network devices, enabling the assignment of efficiency indices and optimising task execution for energy efficiency.
- UC14: Green network orchestration in the edge
A third-party provider deploys containers on an Edge Cloud platform during predicted periods of low CO2e emissions and low energy consumption.
Energy Efficiency Services – Rewarding users for avoided CO2e or charging for emissions
- UC7: Carbon certificates as a service
The 6G network shall provide a Carbon Usage Report of the energy consumption and equivalent CO2e the subscriber is accountable for.
- UC8: Carbon Emission Charging
The service consumer is attributed for his/her energy consumption and CO2e by the Mobile Network Operator for all services used.
Key Results
EXIGENCE is set to transform the ICT landscape with an autonomous green network for 6G powered by AI and Machine Learning (ML) techniques using autonomic distributed protocols to enhance efficiency, sustainability, and adaptability in communication networks.
Energy-aware ICT Metering Solution
EXIGENCE prioritises precise measurement of energy consumption and carbon footprint as the cornerstone for sustainable ICT services. These measurements are fundamental to EXIGENCE’s orchestration and incentivisation pillars, directly empowering service providers to implement targeted green initiatives and empower users to make informed, eco-conscious choices. By providing data-driven insights, EXIGENCE aims to foster responsible service usage and encourage users to select providers based on environmental performance.
To achieve this, EXIGENCE will develop crucial metrics for evaluating energy and carbon footprint across complex, multi-domain service scenarios. This includes creating measurement methods using diverse hardware and software approaches, developing prototype tools, and establishing a cross-domain data exchange framework. These methods will be implemented through enhanced existing tools and newly developed prototype tools. Ultimately, Exigence seeks to provide the necessary tools and data to comprehensively understand and reduce the environmental impact of ICT services, fostering a more sustainable digital ecosystem.
EXIGENCE will address existing gaps in holistic cross-domain evaluation, providing key metrics such as:
- Individual user session energy consumption and CO₂e.
- Complete end-to-end service chain energy consumption and CO₂e.
- Virtualised environment energy consumption.
- Renewable energy factors.
Energy-aware Orchestration Product
EXIGENCE’s Energy-aware Orchestration Product is designed to transform ICT service deployment and management by placing environmental sustainability at its core. By leveraging innovative orchestration techniques, it enables cloud providers, ICT companies, and IT departments to significantly reduce their carbon footprint. This is achieved by dynamically allocating application components to the most energy-efficient computing resources, balancing performance needs with carbon emission reductions. Ultimately, this product offers a competitive advantage to businesses prioritising sustainability, addressing the challenges of heterogeneous resource management, lack of carbon-aware orchestration, dynamic resource variability, and inefficient green energy utilisation.
To achieve this, EXIGENCE will implement advanced resource orchestration using cutting-edge protocols, enabling scalable and energy-efficient resource selection. The product introduces carbon-aware service deployment, reducing the carbon footprint while maintaining or enhancing QoS through detailed energy consumption profiles and optimisation techniques. Dynamic optimisation for green execution will be achieved by leveraging AI/ML to adjust service paths and resource allocations based on network changes, ensuring minimal CO₂ emissions. Furthermore, intelligent orchestration and optimisation will maximise the use of renewable energy sources, reducing reliance on carbon-intensive energy. This comprehensive approach harmonises energy efficiency, carbon reduction, and service quality, driving a paradigm shift towards sustainable ICT.
Incentive-compatible Energy Reduction Mechanisms
Incentives are crucial for motivating energy efficiency and carbon reduction in ICT. They foster both short-term and long-term pro-environmental behaviours, scaling effectively to impact large user bases. Policy-based mechanisms, combining financial and regulatory measures, further support these goals. EXIGENCE focuses on developing innovative, “all-win” incentive mechanisms across the service delivery chain, aiming to induce “carbon-friendly behaviour” and rationalise service consumption.
To achieve this, EXIGENCE will design incentive mechanisms to promote wise consumption by ICT users through monetary and non-monetary rewards. It will also develop mechanisms for infrastructure providers and network operators to encourage collaboration and energy-aware pricing. Building on a thorough review of existing incentive mechanisms and specific user case requirements, EXIGENCE introduces novel approaches to foster greener user behaviors and enhance stakeholder coordination. This blend of economic and behavioral incentives contributes significantly to global sustainability goals by reducing the carbon footprint of ICT services.
6G-relevant 3GPP Contribution
The 3GPP SA1 Release 20 study, led by China Mobile with contributions from TNO and EXIGENCE, integrates energy efficiency into mobile network standards. Building on Release 19, it utilises EXIGENCE’s use cases (TR 22.883.) and references the Green ICT DIGEST to standardise energy measurement across networks, reflecting industry-wide sustainable ICT efforts.
To achieve this, EXIGENCE, alongside other contributors, is helping the 3GPP Release 20 study standardise energy-efficient practices. They’re doing this by providing practical use cases and highlighting broader industry engagement through the Green ICT DIGEST, which supports the creation of a framework for accurate energy measurement across entire network infrastructures. This work ultimately aims to ensure future 3GPP standards prioritise and manage energy consumption, reflecting a widespread commitment to sustainable ICT.
Dependable Inter-domain Energy Metric Exchange
Energy consumption (EC) along with carbon intensity (CI) are key metrics to understand the ecological impact of an ICT service. When a service is operated over multiple domains under different authorities, sharing the EC and CI data – ecodata – is challenging without centralized authority. Given that, EXIGENCE studies how ecodata can be shared across several domains in a trustworthy manner.
To achieve this, EXIGENCE considers using the novel capabilities of the Permissioned Distributed Ledger service as currently being standardised in the ETSI PDL ISG to address the following problems:
- Metering of both physical and virtualised environments: in WP2, EXIGENCE studies existing methods for fine-grained EC and CI metering in both physical and virtualised environments and metrics required to communicate these. These insights will be transferred to the ongoing standardisation work item in the ETSI PDL ISG;
- ETSI PDL ISG specific architecture extensions to support ecodata exchange: through the work in WP2 (T2.3) EXIGENCE partners contribute to the new ETSI PDL ISG Work Item established in September 2024 with our support and from our contributions to study suitable PDL service architecture enhancement for E2E ecodata metering, collection and sharing;
- In particular, the contribution from EXIGENCE partners targets using distributed consensus mechanisms for ecodata metering, eco data post-verification and service enforcement with smart contracts.
Selected Test Beds
The EXIGENCE Project has selected two strategic testbeds: one in Aveiro, Portugal, and another in Ljubljana, Slovenia. These facilities provide diverse and complementary environments for the development and validation of advanced 5G and beyond technologies, enabling the project to rigorously test and refine its innovative solutions.
1. Aveiro, Portugal
A commercial standalone 5G network with multi-location radio units, and a mobility testbed featuring 24 fixed and one high-speed mobile node.
The ITAV experimental facility in Aveiro provides a realistic, city-wide 5G and beyond testing environment. It integrates research and commercial solutions, diverse 5G deployments, and connected devices to enable comprehensive development and validation of multi-domain, multi-technology solutions from concept to final testing.
2. Ljubljana, Slovenia
A private 5G network operating at 3.8 GHz, featuring an edge node, distributed far-edge nodes, and 5G user devices. This network can be deployed on an IaaS platform or in the cloud.
The INTERNET INSTITUTE’s testbed in Ljubljana features a flexible 5G Standalone Non-Public Network with comprehensive tools for testing and development, supported by multiple EU projects. It offers indoor, outdoor, and field-based experimentation capabilities.
Aveiro, Portugal
A commercial standalone 5G network with multi-location radio units, and a mobility testbed featuring 24 fixed and one high-speed mobile node.
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Lorem ipsum odor amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ligula egestas fusce nisi sociosqu aliquam dis commodo dapibus. Eleifend ornare primis morbi donec facilisi luctus leo eget. Ad finibus aliquam vulputate finibus orci viverra. Habitasse facilisis purus gravida nostra; non ac rutrum hendrerit. Magna nostra nam ante tempor maximus molestie himenaeos. Quisque commodo mollis elit, euismod proin tincidunt. Fermentum fusce pretium eu habitasse ante mi leo felis.
The ITAV experimental facility in Aveiro provides a realistic, city-wide 5G and beyond testing environment. It integrates research and commercial solutions, diverse 5G deployments, and connected devices to enable comprehensive development and validation of multi-domain, multi-technology solutions from concept to final testing
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Lorem ipsum odor amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ligula egestas fusce nisi sociosqu aliquam dis commodo dapibus.
Lorem ipsum odor amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit
Lorem ipsum odor amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ligula egestas fusce nisi sociosqu aliquam dis commodo dapibus. Eleifend ornare primis morbi donec facilisi luctus leo eget. Ad finibus aliquam vulputate finibus orci viverra. Habitasse facilisis purus gravida nostra; non ac rutrum hendrerit. Magna nostra nam ante tempor maximus molestie himenaeos. Quisque commodo mollis elit, euismod proin tincidunt. Fermentum fusce pretium eu habitasse ante mi leo felis.
Lorem ipsum odor amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ligula egestas fusce nisi sociosqu aliquam dis commodo dapibus. Eleifend ornare primis morbi donec facilisi luctus leo eget. Ad finibus aliquam vulputate finibus orci viverra. Habitasse facilisis purus gravida nostra; non ac rutrum hendrerit. Magna nostra nam ante tempor maximus molestie himenaeos. Quisque commodo mollis elit, euismod proin tincidunt. Fermentum fusce pretium eu habitasse ante mi leo felis.
