Toward 6G Sustainable Mobile Communications

Mobile communication — fueled by continuous technology innovation over several decades — is anchoring ever deeper into the heart of our society. It can contribute to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by offering pervasive connectivity to improve human society efficiency in an increasingly sustainable manner. Because carbon emissions is a major cause of global warming and climate change, it is crucial that, with the future expected data growth in mobile communications, services can also be provided in a sustainable manner, forging a path toward carbon neutrality. Therefore, the development of new technologies natively designed for carbon footprint reduction is a key objective. This article focuses on two directions for a sustainable 6G system design: energy efficiency and carbon-awareness. Energy efficiency ultimately aims at minimizing the overall electricity needs of the 6G system, and thus, also the related carbon emissions from power plants. Additionally, carbon-awareness could enable reducing and limiting the carbon footprint of the 6G system.