Mobile phone networks along with land-line networks are working on plans to cut energy usage by a massive amount; in fact plans are afoot to reduce energy consumption to one ten thousandth of what it is today.
To cut energy to one ten thousandth of current consumption might seem to be an impossible target, but according to a group of experts working on this challenge it is a realistic target. All that it needs are improved and more intelligent data coding techniques.
The group of researchers who are investigating this is called “Green Touch” and far from being a group of cranks, the group is being coordinated by the world leading Bell Research Laboratories in Murray hill, New Jersey USA. This is the very place where the transistor was invented, not to mention the laser.
The first objective is to reduce power use in telecommunications to 0.1 % of today’s levels by 2015. The amount of carbon dioxide that telecoms output to the atmosphere is currently 300,000,000 tons a year which is equivalent to 50,000,000 cars.
The plans involve developing better coding so that low power channels can be used without the risk of interference destroying data. Currently, in order to avoid interference, signal to noise ratios need to be high, and this means using high signal power levels, but if clever coding could avoid this risk then power levels could be reduced substantially.
Another energy saving technique is to bundle data that is sharing similar routes. Currently a considerable amount of energy is dissipated that could be avoided if bundling protocols could be developed.
A third way is to reduce the energy consumption of mobile phones and other hardware such as modems, and routers. Here the trick will be to develop ways in which these devices can go into a deep sleep mode where they effectively hibernate and use virtually no energy when they are not in use, but wake up very quickly when they are needed.
Another group is concentrating on improving the way in which we use our mobiles by providing us with energy saving settings along with accurate battery indicators so that we manage them more efficiently.
Assuming these important changes will take effect by 2015, it remains to see what will be real and what will be fiction.