EU-funded project EARTH wins 2012 "Future Internet Award"

The EARTH project is the winner of the "Future Internet Award" for developing energy efficiency solutions for wireless communication networks. In particular, the European researchers have optimised the energy use of 4G/LTE (Long-Term Evolution) base stations, which account for the highest energy consumption in the mobile network.

Researchers from companies such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Telecom Italia, DOCOMO, and from universities in Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and UK, won the 2012 "Future Internet Award" prize for its common project EARTH. This project works in developing unprecedented energy efficiency solutions for wireless communication networks.

The project received €10 million of its nearly €15 million from the EU 7th Framework Programme, and it will runs until June 2012. Industrial and SME partners have already started to transfer their results into real products for the multi-billion euro global market for 4G products. Particularly, they have optimised the energy use of 4G/LTE (Long-Term Evolution) base stations, which account for the highest energy consumption in the mobile network.

According to the European Commission, optimising the energy use of the network will gradually bring down electricity bills for operators and help keep mobile costs affordable, while reducing pollution and carbon emissions. By reducing the power required to operate each mobile base station, it is also expected that these stations could in future be operated reliably by renewable energy, further reducing emissions. Today there are 1.2 billion mobile broadband users, and the figure is growing by hundreds of millions each year. In addition to this, mobile video and other data services consume much more energy than calls and SMS.