In the race for the deployment of 5G and beyond wireless networks, we are witnessing a staggering and rapid growth of mobile traffic volumes, featuring increasingly tighter Quality of Service constraints. Besides the rising popularity of traditional communication services, the penetration of massive Internet of Things communications in several fields is contributing to the traffic demand upsurge. With the rise of the number of connected machines, 6G networks are expected to support about ten million devices per square kilometer, ten fold more than the 5G connection density requirements. Furthermore, the overall power demand of 5G networks is estimated to be at least 10 times larger than the demand of 4G.

In this context, high consuming network components and users’ equipment, as well as the extensive network densification process that is required to satisfy this huge and exacting service demand are both responsible for the upsurge of energy consumption and carbon emissions, hence raising remarkable sustainability concerns.
In a similar scenario, tackling sustainability issues represents a pivotal challenge in the evolution towards next-generation wireless networks.
In the design of the network of the future, research efforts must be steered not only to deploy more energy efficient wireless networks, but also to implement novel communication solutions that can effectively downsize the overall network energy consumption and promote an extensive integration of renewable energy sources, in order to reduce the wireless network impact in terms of carbon footprint and enable a sustainable and green transition towards the 6G era.

Authors are hence invited to submit high-quality contributions focusing on investigating novel solutions that aim at making future wireless networks greener and sustainable, specifically targeting the peculiar requirements of the wireless network shift towards 6G scenarios.

Topics of interest of the proposed workshop include, but are not limited to:

• Renewable energy source integration to power wireless networks

• Energy harvesting techniques in wireless systems

• Efficient energy management in wireless networks

• Energy-aware resource allocation and management

• Sustainable physical layer design and medium access control

• Energy-aware routing protocols

• Architecture design and system implementation for sustainable wireless networks and computing systems

• Sustainable computing

• Sustainable content delivery

• Energy efficient software implementation

• Machine learning for sustainable networks

• Energy saving approaches based on cooperation of the wireless network with the Smart Grid

• Cross-technology cooperation targeting energy saving and sustainability objectives

• Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces to enhance wireless network sustainability

• Aerial networks to support terrestrial network sustainability

• Federated learning to make wireless networks greener

• Multi-access edge computing to enhance sustainability 6G networks and UN SDG (United Nations Sustainable Development Goals)