Energy efficiency in communications: Part III

his Feature Topic is the finale of the series on Energy Efficiency in Communications (November 2010, June 2011, and August 2011). From the previous two issues, it is clear that substantial improvement of energy efficiency in the information and communications technologies (ICT) sector is strongly expected to be achieved through the fundamental innovation enabled by various novel networking architectures, communications protocols, and algorithms. After publication of those two issues (November 2010 and June 2011), we received a great deal of encouragement and a number of inquiries showing deep interest in the critical challenges of energy-efficient communications, which further motivated us to prepare for this final issue (August 2011). Surprisingly, we have noticed that two articles published in the November 2010 issue were listed in "The Top 100 Documents Downloaded for the Month of November 2010" within the IEEE Xplore digital library, while six articles published in the June 2011 issue were immediately listed in "The Top 100 Documents Downloaded for the Month of June 2011."