The GreenTouch Consortium, a research initiative dedicated to improving the energy efficiency of information and communications technology networks by a factor of 1,000, announced the demonstration of a large-scale antenna system proof of concept.
The antenna system, which the company claims as “the first technology on road to realizing 1,000-fold network energy efficiency vision,” offers the potential for energy savings due to its innovative wireless transmission techniques.The large-scale antenna system proof of concept demonstrated that radiated power consumption could be significantly reduced as the number of antenna elements is increased. An antenna array comprising 100 elements would transmit only one percent of the energy transmitted by a single antenna, for the same quality of service.
“When we launched the GreenTouch Consortium last year, we set ambitious goals for ourselves,” said Gee Rittenhouse, GreenTouch Consortium chairman and vice president of research at Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) Bell Labs, in a statement.
GreenTouch has also shared its achievements in the last few months. It highlighted some of the more than two dozen research projects that are either already in progress or under consideration.
Ever since the launch of GreenTouch last year, it doubled membership and attracted the participation of leading scientists from across the industry. GreenTouch established ongoing working groups focused on several key technology areas, and won awards from Global Telecoms Business and the World Economic Forum.
GreenTouch discussed a project which was drawn from the consortium’s key areas of technology focus – wireline access; core switching and routing; mobile communications; core optical networking and transmission; and services, applications, and energy trends. “The areas of the network where GreenTouch is focusing its research efforts are those that have clear potential for achieving significant energy efficiencies, and evidence that the consortium has made some impressive strides in a short period of time,” said Vernon Turner, senior vice president of Enterprise Infrastructure, Consumer, Network, Telecom and Sustainability research groups, at IDC (News - Alert).
Back in October, GreenTouch announced that 18 new organizations from across the telecommunications and energy sectors have joined the consortium. The new members of GreenTouch consortium include equipment vendors, service providers, research institutions, and universities.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications & technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2011, taking place Feb 2-4, 2011, in Miami. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.
Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Tammy Wolf