IMEC joins energy consortium

Imec says it will take part in the Green Touch Initiative, a consortium initiated by Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent.

The initiative is committed to inventing the technologies that will be at the heart of the next generation of sustainable networks. The consortium has set itself the goal of creating technologies necessary to achieve a 1000-fold improvement in the future power consumption of the internet and other communication networks (eg, corporate networks) by 2015.

To achieve its target, the consortium will use the expertise of industrial research groups, academia and service providers, and will collaborate in pioneering new technologies and fundamentally redesigning the current ICT networks.

Imec intends to bring its wireless communication expertise to the consortium. Its green radio R&D program focuses on low-power and low-cost radio technology. The R&D centre has a track record on low-power reconfigurable radio technologies, power optimisation through embedded intelligence and environment-aware cognitive solutions, millimetre-wave high-throughput wireless communication for gigabit communication at short distances and ultralow-power wireless communication in the context of personal sensor networks.

In the framework of its recently launched INSITE program, Imec studies the impact of new process technologies on circuits, addressing the increasing need in the industry towards more application-specific technology solutions to reach targets as set forward by the initiative.