Project Overview

Vision & Mission

The general ambition of EXIGENCE is to verifiably improve the net energy consumption and, with it, the carbon footprints of ICT services in the context of next-generation mobile systems (6G).

Even though previous and current generations (4G, 5G) have efficiently reduced radio power consumption (W/ kbps), the ongoing digitisation of the society at large continuously transform economic and technical realities in the telecommunications landscape. This is resulting in an increase in power consumption and ensuing carbon dioxide (CO₂) production that is not sustainable.

With EXIGENCE, we pursue the goal of measurable reduction of energy consumption/carbon footprint of delivered, typical ICT services. Herein, we do not stop after one iteration, but rather analyse and leverage farther-reaching consequences.

Our Ambitions

The general ambition of EXIGENCE is to verifiably improve the net energy consumption and, with it, the carbon footprints of ICT services in the context of next-generation mobile systems (6G). Even though previous and current generations (4G, 5G) have efficiently reduced radio power consumption (W/ kbps), the ongoing digitisation of the society at large continuously transforms economic and technical realities in the telecommunications landscape. This results in an increased power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions (CO₂e) that are not sustainable.

Measure

Enabling service-level sustainability measurements across different domains: Solving the technological part of interdomain measurement challenges in a way that is societally acceptable in the current ICT service ecosystem is the primary ambition of this project.

Optimise

Enabling service provisioning and service invocation resource optimisations: Optimising the energy/carbon footprint of ICT service use, by minimising operational costs and infrastructure, requires effective implementation mechanisms.

Incentivise

Fair responsibility attribution: Actively engaging users in reducing ICT's energy and carbon footprint, through economic incentives, is crucial for bridging the technological-societal gap and preventing rebound effects.

Our Objectives

Project Objective 1

Conception, design and prototype implementation of a system, to be validated at TRL 4, capable of reliably assessing energy consumption/carbon footprint equivalents (CO₂e) of the use phase of an ICT service execution/provisioning over all involved domains, potentially of different tenants.

Project Objective 2

Exploration, adaptation and conception of novel, incentive-compatible energy consumption/carbon footprint reduction mechanisms, for both service providers and service users, resulting in the following end-to-end service level improvements:

Reduction of energy consumption/carbon footprint by factor 3 for relatively simple use cases (e.g., video streaming, i.e., eMBB/best effort transport service with typical, low-SLA compute endpoint in a data centre),
Reduction of energy consumption/carbon footprint by factor 5 for use cases with strict guarantees (e.g., PNI-NPN2 with both transport and compute services guaranteed at a high SLA),
Bringing CO₂e to zero for some realistic deployment options of the considered use cases.

Project Objective 3

Transformation of the obtained insights into requirements and suitable solutions for the most important, typical ICT domains and systems, to be brought into various SDOs in charge, in particular:

Requirements for 6G systems in the 3GPP, specifically 3GPP SA1;
Requirements and suitable solutions for interfaces, APIs and modules into ETSI.

Target Impact Areas

Energy Efficiency

EXIGENCE targets efficient usage of energy across the entire service chain of the telecommunication networks. A unique feature of EXIGENCE is its addressing of energy consumption/carbon footprint reduction systematically, i.e. in every aspect of telecommunication networks, from the promotion of equipment with green labels to minimising energy consumption in their operational phase. The latter is achieved through advanced algorithms such as energy-aware service orchestration.

Key outputs: Products (e.g. green orchestrator), standards (e.g. 3GPP SA5, ETSI).

Green Energy

EXIGENCE aims at optimal usage of green energy sources already available and distributed over the network, today usually closer to edge and deep edge resources. Algorithms to dynamically steer services toward execution points with green energy sources are the method of choice of EXIGENCE in this respect.

Key outputs: Products (e.g. runtime controller), research.

Energy Metering

EXIGENCE will promote advanced energy metering methods, and precisely, enable service-level energy measurements, including amounts and types of consumed energy. EXIGENCE will thus produce novel energy metering infrastructure, with the goal of its direct usage in the products of the involved SMEs (ININ, specifically).

Key outputs: Products (energy-aware ICT service monitoring), standards (e.g. 3GPP SA1, SA2, ETSI), research.

Energy Business Models

With metered energy consumption information delivered to the right service value chain member (i.e. the information delivered to service consumers about what energy their service consumption consumes elsewhere) and appropriate incentives delivered to all involved actors, EXIGENCE will effectively create an economic model in which all players act as to consume energy in a responsible manner.

Key outputs: Recommendations to regulators, research.

Reduction of Energy Consumption

EXIGENCE prioritises reducing energy consumption across telecom networks. Its systematic approach includes promoting energy-efficient equipment and using algorithms like energy-aware service orchestration to dynamically optimise resource allocation and minimize energy waste. Beyond green energy, EXIGENCE focuses on reducing overall energy demand by intelligently matching workloads to the most efficient resources.