Greening 6G: New Horizons

This chapter is focused on the green and sustainable evolution of 6G networks. It is foreseen that 6G will enable interconnection and collaboration of entities with various levels of intelligence, i.e. connected intelligence. To this end, not only the radio networks face high energy cost but the computing on devices and network infrastructures like base station and edge servers also has energy barriers. The chapter will first identify the dominating factors of the energy consumption in 6G networks from the system point of view. Then a holistic approach for green 6G will be introduced, highlighting the role of artificial intelligence (AI) therein. In particular, the benefits of applying AI in wireless networks considering the computing energy for AI training and inference will be carefully judged, and the energy-efficient way of enabling wireless edge intelligence will be discussed.