Wireless network

Wireless network redesign could cut carbon pollution

The World Today

By Lexi Metherell

Posted Tue 23 Apr 2013, 3:02pm AEST

Photo: Researchers says mobile networks are not energy efficient due to the power it takes to send a signal over a vast area. (Gary Rivett: ABC News)

Map: Australia

Australian researchers are helping to design new mobile phone networks that could be up to 1,000 times more energy efficient than current networks.

The University of Melbourne's Centre for Energy Efficient estimates wireless networks will grow globally by 460 per cent over the next two years.
The additional energy consumption is expected to add the equivalent pollution of 4.9 million extra cars on the road.
The centre's Professor Rod Tucker says demand on wireless networks is climbing as more and more people use their mobile devices to access applications like email, web browsing, social media and video.
He says the energy consumption used to power these networks is bad news for the environment.

We're predicting that by 2015, based on current trends, that the wireless network connected to the cloud could generate as much CO2 as about 5 million new cars.

Professor Rod Tucker
Listen to the interview

"More and more applications these days use the so-called cloud, the cloud being a concept of the internet connected to data centres with a whole range of applications such as Google Maps, iTunes, [and] tramTRACKER," he told The World Today.
"In the past people have been concerned that the data centres that drive these applications have been consuming large amounts of energy, and they certainly are."
But Professor Tucker says the energy consumption of mobile phone towers and their networks are more of a concern.
"We're predicting that by 2015, based on current trends, that the wireless network connected to the cloud could generate as much CO2 as about 5 million new cars," he said.
"Every mobile phone tower that you see consumes a large amount of energy typically in the kilowatts. That's as much power as a number of radiator heaters that you might use in your home.
"The reason why that is is that the radio signal that comes from the mobile phone towers spreads right across the surrounding countryside, but only a very tiny amount of the energy actually is received by the device that the person is carrying, whether it is a laptop or a tablet device or a mobile phone."
Professor Tucker says it is not a very energy-efficient process.
"A large amount of energy is required in the mobile phone towers to spread that signal wide and far, even though a very small amount is received by the devices that the individual user is carrying," he said.

Energy efficiency

A large amount of energy is required in the mobile phone towers to spread that signal wide and far even though a very small amount is received by the devices that the individual user is carrying.

Professor Rod Tucker

Professor Tucker says the University of Melbourne is working with a global consortium called Green Touch to help solve the problem.
"[The consortium] is working out ways to redesign the wireless network to make it much more energy efficient and what that's going to mean is that there'll be a lot of those large big towers will be replaced by a larger number of very small antennas," he said.
"In cities in particular [that] is likely to help to reduce the amount of energy consumed."
Professor Tuckers says the energy-efficient networks will likely be rolled out in the next five to 10 years.
He says the redesigned networks will also help provide better download speeds for customers.
"It's really quite amazing what can be achieved and the results of our research is indicating that we can improve the energy efficiency of the mobile network by a factor of 1,000 if we take this route to more smaller antennas," he said.
"So the efficiency of improvement of a factor of 1,000 would mean that one could download 1,000 times more data for the same amount of energy, and this will, we believe, help to cope with the large increase in data that's expected in the next 10 to 15 years."