In the race for the deployment of 5G and beyond wireless networks, we are witnessing a staggering and rapid growth of mobile traffic volumes, featuring increasingly tighter Quality of Service constraints. Besides the rising popularity of traditional communication services, the penetration of massive Internet of Things communications in several fields is contributing to the traffic demand upsurge. With the rise of the number of connected machines, 6G networks are expected to support about ten million devices per square kilometer, ten fold more than the 5G connection density requirements. Furthermore, the overall power demand of 5G networks is estimated to be at least 10 times larger than the demand of 4G.

In this context, high consuming network components and users’ equipment, as well as the extensive network densification process that is required to satisfy this huge and exacting service demand are both responsible for the upsurge of energy consumption and carbon emissions, hence raising remarkable sustainability concerns.
In a similar scenario, tackling sustainability issues represents a pivotal challenge in the evolution towards next-generation wireless networks.
In the design of the network of the future, research efforts must be steered not only to deploy more energy efficient wireless networks, but also to implement novel communication solutions that can effectively downsize the overall network energy consumption and promote an extensive integration of renewable energy sources, in order to reduce the wireless network impact in terms of carbon footprint and enable a sustainable and green transition towards the 6G era.

Authors are hence invited to submit high-quality contributions focusing on investigating novel solutions that aim at making future wireless networks greener and sustainable, specifically targeting the peculiar requirements of the wireless network shift towards 6G scenarios.

Topics of interest of the proposed workshop include, but are not limited to:

Renewable energy source integration to power wireless networks

Energy harvesting techniques in wireless systems

Efficient energy management in wireless networks

Energy-aware resource allocation and management

Sustainable physical layer design and medium access control

Energy-aware routing protocols

Architecture design and system implementation for sustainable wireless networks and computing systems

Sustainable computing

Sustainable content delivery

Energy efficient software implementation

Machine learning for sustainable networks

Energy saving approaches based on cooperation of the wireless network with the Smart Grid

Cross-technology cooperation targeting energy saving and sustainability objectives

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces to enhance wireless network sustainability

Aerial networks to support terrestrial network sustainability

Federated learning to make wireless networks greener

Multi-access edge computing to enhance sustainability 6G networks and UN SDG (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals)