Green optical communications

As the volume of data carried on the telecommunications network grows, telecommunications operators continue to expand the size and reach of their networks to accommodate this increased volume of data. In this context, the power consumption and environmental impact of telecommunications networks and data centres has become an issue of increasing engineering importance and environmental concern. The carbon footprint of the telecommunications network is already considerable today and ‘business-as-usual’ forecasts predict about a doubling within one decade. As a consequence, there has been a world-wide increase in research in green aspects of telecommunications. The objective of this Symposium is to explore some of the key questions in green optical communications and to highlight important research problems. Symposium speakers will address a range of topics, including the challenges in improving the energy efficiency of telecommunications equipment, approaches to ultra-low power optical communications, network architectures, cloud computing, and holistic approaches to considering energy and information flows in telecommunications. Five renowned speakers from various backgrounds will present overviews of these topics and this will be followed by a panel session in which the audience can participate in a lively discussion.