Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, University of Melbourne & Victoria State Government Open Center for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications
Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs and University of Melbourne, both recognized for expertise in sustainable networking, in partnership with the Victorian State Government, officially launched the Center for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET), described as one of the largest research efforts on green telecommunications in the world.
CEET will be devoted to innovation in energy-efficient networks and technologies with the ultimate goal of reducing the impact of telecommunications on the environment. The facility will have a staff of researchers and technology experts that will build to a team of 22 over the next three years.
In achieving its goals, CEET will take advantage of Bell Labs’ experience in generating breakthrough technologies and guiding collaborative research projects and the University of Melbourne’s world-class research in telecommunications network infrastructure. Bell Labs also brings a global research perspective and a wealth of expertise in energy-efficiency research, especially in the wireless area, that complements that of CEET.
"We’ve established a leading research program in network energy efficiency that has generated technology breakthroughs like those at the heart the recently announced lightRadio solution," said Jeong Kim, President of Bell Labs. "We look forward to contributing our expertise to help CEET reach its potential."
"Today, telecommunications networks in Australia use about one% of our energy supply and with increasing demands for bandwidth, this is expected to grow dramatically - unless we find ways to make our networks more efficient," said Rod Tucker, University of Melbourne Laureate Professor.
CEET represents a highly valuable opportunity for the state of Victoria with the significant step it takes toward green telecommunications objectives. As the first facility of its kind in Australia, CEET will position the state as a hub for ICT research and a place for development and training in information, technology and energy-efficient communications.
The Center has announced nine new projects in the fields of modelling, transmission and fundamental technology, as part of its focus on driving energy efficiency.
The following projects will drive a deeper understanding of how telecommunications networks consume energy and enable the development of more sophisticated models of managing energy consumption: cloud computing, content distribution and information logistics; energy efficiency of next-generation networks; and internet services energy star rating.
Three projects will explore techniques to reduce the energy consumption of the transmission equipment in telecommunications networks: energy efficiency of future modulation format; low energy point-to-point access network; and analogue to digital converters.
A separate program of work includes three projects that will explore the physical and mathematical properties of photons and electrons to enable a better understanding of the future possibilities in the development of energy-efficient telecommunications equipment: energy efficient wireless networks; fundamental limits of switching and information transfer; and router power measurement.
