Project OPERA-Net

Abstract

Heterogeneous Broadband Wireless Network deployment is expected to create an explosive growth of new and existing services, providing the user with a rich broadband experience through true, ubiquitous, real-time, multi-media communications on the move.It is a reality however that new high-bandwidth, high-spectral efficiency modulation schemes being developed to support these broad-band services are fundamentally ‘RF-unfriendly’, and one consequence is the power demanded by future networks is predicted to dramatically increase beyond available and sustainable power envelopes. This fact coupled with increasing environmental pressures presents a significant barrier to mobile network deployment that if unaddressed, will severely restrict technical functionality, delay network roll-out and consequently limit the economic and social benefit to the European Community. It is the consortium’s view that if the efficiency problem remains unaddressed, there is a significant risk that Europe’s world-leading position and competitive edge in this market segment will significantly impacted.

Despite ongoing research into energy and power efficiency within academia and the wireless network industry, this is highly fragmented and tends to focus on improving and optimising individual subsystems in isolation. In contrast, the OPERA-Net project aims to address this issue through a holistic approach considering a complete end-to-end system, identifying all relevant network elements and their interdependencies. The fundamental premise is that the efficiency of these individual system elements is highly inter-related, and in order to achieve the radical efficiency improvements envisaged, these must be considered in unison. The project will address the following criteria and objectives:

• Radical improvement in energy efficiency at system, infrastructure and terminal level
• Develop metrics and Key Performance Indicators for mobile network efficiency to direct the development and stimulate competition for efficiency through easy system comparability
• Enable EU industry to take leadership in environmentally sustainable mobile networks