[E-impact] Delay Tolerant Users / Services and Flexiblity

[Alexander PELOV <[e-mail]>]

Hi all,

On a separate topic, and somewhat related to the elasticity of energy consumption with the served trafic, a couple of years ago we worked on the notion of Delay Tolerant Users [1]. 

We considered the fact that the energy consumption is not really elastic and instead focused on what can we do to turn off parts of the network.
We used the notion that we can ask some uses (or users) to wait. This allowed to define a network, where base stations were sleeping more often and for longer periods.

The idea is that some types of traffic can be deferred with (almost) no consequences (such as file downloads), but others - such as voice or video calls - can keep a cell "on" even for very small amounts of trafic.. and explicitly stating that some users are willing to wait for 30 sec. before getting connectivity may actually be worth it. In remote places where base stations are powered by off-grid diesel generators, the cost gains can make people tolerate such delays.

It is akin the Smart Gird, where one of the major changes in the way customers are regarded, is the possibility to ask them to change their behaviors to help the grid (vs. the traditional Power Grid, where the customers' demand must be met at all cost). We actually did some work on how this could be coupled with Renewable Energy generation, and on paper it works really well.


It is of course difficult to imagine today in an always-connected world to ask people to WAIT for 30 seconds... Moreover, there are requirements for coverage, so it will not be possible to completely turn off all the infrastructure, even during the night, even if we know there is noone there.

But what if we can have a very tiny channel for messaging/signaling, sleep everything around, allow the establishment of calls/connections/requesting a resource, etc., and provide some kind of *WAIT* indication from the network to the end-users/applications, which indicates them that things are being set up and the call will be established in X seconds (or the file/page download will start in that time). In the mean time, the phone at the other end can even start ringing..

I don't think core routers will be put to sleep, but MAYBE there could be more flexibiliy in the system if there is a TRUSTED way to signal to the end-user that things are being prepared and will be ready in a given deadline. 

And, of course, I'm not really talking about QoS, but probably questions such as net neutrality and the possibility to abuse with these kinds of messages should be studied carefully.

Also, sorry if this already exists or was proven to not work at all.


Cheers,
Alexander


[1] S. Gamboa, A. Pelov, P. Maillé, X. Lagrange and N. Montavont, "Reducing the Energy Footprint of Cellular Networks with Delay-Tolerant Users," in IEEE Systems Journal, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 729-739, June 2017, doi: 10.1109/JSYST.2015.2476376.