A Survey of Challenges in Green Wireless Communications Research

Nowadays, there is interest on technology development in the growing area of green communications for reducing energy consumption in wireless communications. Some works reported in literature claim that there will be an increase of CO2 equivalent emissions by a factor of three until 2020 compared to 2007. Advanced physical layer techniques such as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), cognitive radio (CR), network coding, new network architectures such as heterogeneous network, network resource management schemes and cooperative communication have been proposed to address this issue. However developing an optimal energy reduction plan requires an understanding of the current network, future service offerings, and the technology roadmap, along with numerous additional data to support the analysis. In this work we present a study about challenges in energy-efficient communications and communications technologies as enablers for green solutions. Some challenges that need to be solved in the area are also described.