Design for sustainability - an imperative for future mobile networks

While the pressure significantly increases in acting towards energy efficiency of communication networks, there is the ever-increasing demand for faster data rates and higher capacities to support a plethora of applications across all industrial and societal sectors driven by exponential traffic growth. Besides, there is a growing concern towards the adverse impacts of climate change, scarcity of raw materials, the rising cost of energy, as well as inequity and bias in the use of technology. Therefore, in addition to the conventional KPIs, key dimensions to be considered for now and in the future is the environmental footprint, energy consumption, resource usage, as well as, inclusivity and fairness. The paper discusses the opportunities, design aspects, challenges and tradeoffs to improve energy efficiency and responsible use of technology, in building sustainable networks for the future.