Technology Enablers for Sustainable 6G Design
Tuesday, 3 June 2025, 14:00 – 17:30, room 1.2-1.4
Organisers:
- Mir Ghoraishi (Gigasys Solutions, )
Motivation and Background
Experts have divided sustainability into three primary pillars: social sustainability, economic sustainability, and environmental sustainability. Future mobile network (6G) is a crucial means to achieve sustainability goals in each of these pillars. In fact, in the ongoing vision-building and research toward next generation mobile networks, not only sustainability of the 6G systems is considered as one of the most crucial topics, but also the ways 6G can enable sustainability in other sectors of the industry and society is attracting attentions. Sustainability is attracting more attention in recent years due to the rare alignment of several factors:
- Political: sharp increase of awareness for “green” topics within the World; the neatly fitting political agenda in place (EU’s Green Deal).
- Commercial: the recently highly increased electricity prices; the carbon credit regulations in vigor or, generally, high pressure in this regard on the operators; the predicted role of ICT in the decarbonization of other sectors, likely to increase the 6G loads by magnitudes, compared to 5G and the need to compensate the rebound effects that can be expected.
- Technological: current or recently initiated work on such topics in the most relevant SDOs (e.g., on Energy Efficiency beyond the air interface in 3GPP); the existence of at least three running SNS JU projects dedicated to technological sustainability of future telecoms; new attention to the resource efficiency topic in the top academic research.
This workshop is proposed by collecting contributions from 17 SNS projects, SNS Sustainability Task Force, and 6G-IA Vision Working Group. Their representatives in the event will be sharing their views, achievements, and lessons learnt from their respective projects. The current state of the art fuelled by the insights from the SNS JU projects and the sustainability targets, methodologies and indicators currently employed by these projects as well as the trade-offs, gaps, lessons learned and challenges experienced, analysed in the SNS Sustainability Task Force, will be introduced; and the recent white paper recently released by 6G-IA Vision Working Group will be discussed. The collected insights from each of these activities will be presented in a dedicated session. The expert panel discussion in the end of the day will provide further interaction and alignment on the issue, toward the conclusion and wrap up of the workshop. The contributors are committed to boost the dissemination of workshop conclusions and findings by bringing them into future activities that they organise on a regular basis.
Structure
14:00- 15:30: Session 1
Welcome and Introduction to the Workshop, Mir Ghoraishi, Gigasys Solutions
- SNS JU Vision on Sustainability, the Work Program Key Orientations, the Funding and the Research Topics, Chiara Mazzone, SNS JU
- NTN and IoT for Enhanced Sustainability in 6G Networks, Marcos Katz, University of Oulu
Contributing Projects: 6G-NTN, 5G-STARDUST, SUPER-IoT
This presentation discusses the role of non-terrestrial networks (NTN) and IoT in enhancing sustainability in 6G. There are two key aspects to these roles, namely, i) supporting 6G sustainability, i.e., how these communication approaches will support environmental, social, and economic sustainability in the 6G era; and ii) sustainable 6G solutions, that is, the need for NTN and IoT networks to be based on sustainable solutions. This includes solutions that are sustainable by design, implementation, usage, and disposal. Altogether, this holistic approach to NTN and IoT in 6G will be discussed, highlighting promising concepts, technologies, applications, and use cases that lead to sustainability enhancements. - AI-Driven Energy Efficiency for 6G Networks (1/2), Mir Ghoraishi, Gigasys Solutions
Contributing Projects: BeGREEN, CENTRIC, ORIGAMI
In the most energy-consuming sectors of the mobile network, e.g., in radio access operations, an increased flexibility and scalability can be leveraged to enable AI-assisted automation and optimisation for improved energy consumption. Monitoring, analysing and optimising the network in real-time to ensure that the hardware is performing exactly as it should, can improve the system performance, such as its energy efficiency. Such monitoring and automation could be at the base-station operation level up to the air interface protocols and hardware architecture optimisations. The virtualisation and centralisation of radio access network (RAN), plus acceleration and data-driven task offloading mechanisms, leveraging machine learning models predict network loads and optimize task distribution not only reduces the physical load on individual network components but also ensures a more sustainable, energy-efficient RAN structure suitable for the intensive demands of future 6G applications. This presentation provides further insights into the related challenges and recent innovations in these areas. - AI-Driven Energy Efficiency for 6G Networks (2/2), Sébastien Faye, Luxemburg Institute of Science and Technology
Contributing Projects: 6G-EWOC, 6G-TWIN, DESIRE6G, EXIGENCE
Building on the previous talks, this session presents complementary AI-driven enablers for energy efficiency in 6G networks, focusing on, i) AI-enhanced SDN for dynamic traffic optimization, achieving significant energy savings and rapid provisioning across multi-layer networks, ii) Network Digital Twins (NDTs) to enable real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and proactive resource management for sustainable operations, and introducing deep network programmability, showcasing how adaptive architectures can reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint of mobile networks, iii) Task redirection to eco-powered processing and runtime task scheduling. - Secure and Sustainable Design for 6G Network and Services Design, Mays Al-Nady, University of Essex
Contributing Projects: TrialsNet, HORSE, NATWORK
This session will elaborate on the intertwine of security and sustainability in designing 6G networks and services, particularly touching on considerations of zero-touch and zero-trust principles. The section will focus on challenges, opportunities and ongoing efforts in, a) secure-by-design orchestration of 6G services supporting net-zero targets, b) end-to-end security enablers and technologies to support sustainable deployment of 6G services, and c) energy-awareness of zero-touch management frameworks supporting 6G operations. These topics will highlight the role of AI/ML-driven automation for secure, sustainable, and efficient 6G networks. - Observability, Metering and Profiling for 6G Sustainable Network Design, Chiara Lombardo, CNIT, University of Genoa
Contributing Projects: 6GREEN, EXIGENCE
The first step in any debate on operational sustainability of networks is the question of energy information (also called ecodata) availability. Depending on the assessment, the issue can span from assessing isolated devices, or small domains composed of those, to nation-wide infrastructures and logical ontologies spread over several execution layers of otherwise unrelated stakeholders. In this scope, the question of what energy information is available at all, which of it can be observed (measured, collected) by a given controller and how the missing data can be obtained (profiled, estimated, modelled, remapped) becomes crucial. The soundness and completeness of the related collection methodologies deserves thorough sanity testing in terms of maximum supported system sizes, freshness, resolution, accuracy, etc. Recent efforts by the contributing projects on shedding light on this riddle, i.e., by building an Observability framework to break down the energy ascribable to a vertical stakeholder and use this information to feed green business models for the cooperation of all 6G stakeholders towards common sustainability goals, as well as designing a system to allow the latter to collect per domain and exchange across domains energy information pertaining to a collaboratively executed ICT service instance will be discussed in this talk. - Collaborative Approaches towards Sustainability, Rui L. Aguiar, ITAV
Contributing Projects: EXIGENCE, 6GREEN, NATWORK
Given the projected 5x increase in mobile network loads by 2030 on the one hand and the new energy-intensive functions and enablers expected in 6G (e.g., AI/ML) on the other hand, energy efficiency improvements will be certainly required yet probably insufficient to reach the challenging net zero carbon targets expressed by the major European operators (by 2040, some even by 2030). Therefore, the potential of and novel technological approaches around the ideas of service-based energy/CO2e metering and the related explicit user involvement in all energy and carbon reduction measures are worth exploring. Crucial questions in this regard start with raising user awareness and must consider user incentivization and user enablement. We must address how the proposed incentivization mechanisms bias local decision making towards a globally positive result. Acknowledging the high promise of this new line of thought, we have raised novel requirements in the SA1 of 3GPP, which might play a crucial role in shaping 6G.
Coffee break
16:00- 16:45: Session 1
- Insights into the Sustainability Posture of SNS-JU Research Projects, SNS Sustainability Task Force led by Ali Rezaki, Nokia
The presentation of the SNS-JU Sustainability Task Force white paper on the sustainability posture of the SNS-JU funded Call 1 and Call 2 projects. This paper would cover the sustainability targets, methodologies and indicators currently employed by the various research projects as well as the trade-offs, gaps, lessons learned and challenges experienced by the projects, charting a way forward for further research and development for establishing sustainability more prominently in research projects. The paper reflects the output from a detailed questionnaire and interviews carried out by the Sustainability Task Force over the course of a year with almost half of the currently running projects. - Towards a Holistic Sustainability Framework: Sustain-6G Project, Christoph Schmelz, Nokia
Contributing Projects: SUSTAIN-6G
This presentation will introduce the approach of the SUSTAIN-6G project towards a holistic sustainability framework in the context of 6G, addressing three sustainability areas (environmental, societal, economic), and factors impacting sustainable 6G technology and 6G technology for improving verticals’ sustainability. The lighthouse project develops methodologies, best practices and guidelines, which will be validated through Proof-of-Concept demonstrators and will provide the foundation for industry-wide alignment and standardisation to shape a sustainable future of telecommunications within planetary boundaries. - 6G E2E Sustainable System Design Using Knowledge Graph, Akshay Jain, Nokia
Contributing Projects: Hexa-X-II
Sustainability refers to three domains, Environmental, Social and Economic. Most of the time sustainability is reduced to only energy efficiency/consumption, not reflecting the whole picture. Furthermore, deriving technical enablers, being essential for the overall 6G E2E system design, is crucial. Additionally, assessing the overall consistency of operations across the different components of the 6G system and verification of the capabilities to fulfil the targeted KPIs and KVIs for a given use case is necessary. Notably, a knowledge graph method and graph pruning approach can be applied towards the selection of enablers, while utilizing the defined objectives and the constraints. Based on this approach, distinct strategies or design choices based on the pursued values can be achieved. Concretely, the objective here is to optimize the 6G system considering all sustainability domains. Specifically, the different sustainability domains require that enablers are evaluated against complex and sometimes conflicting metrics and requirements. It is here that the Knowledge graph approach alongside the KPI and KVI analysis provides a path forward in traversing such complex system design domain in an objective manner. - Sustainability of 6G: Ways to Reduce Energy Consumption, (6G-IA’s Sustainability Whitepaper) Carlos Bernardos Cano, UC3M, and Artur Hecker, Huawei Munich Research Centre
The whitepaper on the Operational Sustainability of 6G, prepared by the Vision Working Group and published by 6G-IA, will be presented. The whitepaper juxtaposes the agreed vision of 6G with the lessons learnt from 5G in the sense of the energy consumption and carbon footprint production, considering the projected increase in loads with 6G and the novel functions and features it might offer. The whitepaper analyses main causes of energy consumption and the related carbon emissions in mobile network operations and discusses different approaches and enabling technologies along with their potentials for the respective reduction of these indicators. Based on this work, the whitepaper derives several suggestions for business, standardization and research, many of which translate to immediate, concrete actions about energy metering (incl. in 5G), energy/CO2e optimizations in RAN and Core and user involvement.
16:45- 17:30: Panel: Sixtainability: Solid Technologies for a Green 6G
Panelists:
- Ali Rezaki (Nokia)
- Anastasius Gavras (Eurescom)
- Artur Hecker (Huawei Munich)
- Mays Al-Nady (University of Essex)
- Chiara Lombardo (CNIT, University of Genoa)
- Monique Calisti (Martel Innovate)
- Stefan Wendt (Orange)
Moderator: Mir Ghoraishi (Gigasys Solutions)
