Advanced 5G Open Platform for Large Scale Trials and Pilots across Europe (IMAGINE-B5G)

Project Information

IMAGINE-B5G

Grant agreement ID: 101096452

DOI

10.3030/101096452

Project closed

EC signature date 15 November 2022

Start date 1 January 2023

End date 31 March 2026

Funded under

• Digital, Industry and Space

Total cost

€ 12 388 306,93

EU contribution

€ 11 011 735,63

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITAT POLITECNICA DE VALENCIA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - IMAGINE-B5G (Advanced 5G Open Platform for Large Scale Trials and Pilots across Europe (IMAGINE-B5G))

Reporting period: 2023-01-01 to 2024-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The IMAGINE-B5G project aims to build an advanced, easily accessible, secure, and programmable E2E B5G platform (Project Objective (PO) 2) to fill the gap between the B5G market expectation and the capabilities of existing 5G-PPP infrastructure projects. The platform is composed of four advanced 5G experimental facilities, located in Norway, Spain, France, and Portugal. It serves the use cases of industrial verticals in PPDR, media, education, agriculture & forestry, eHealth, transportation & logistics, and Industry 4.0. With well-defined APIs (PO3), these use cases can onboard their applications and validate their specific KPIs. The outcomes will help both IMAGINE-B5G and the society to gain a better understanding of how the B5G solutions will impact the society and what impacts are created (PO8), which will enable the society to optimize the strategy and roadmap of adopting B5G into the business and society and even KVIs (PO1 & 7).
Although all the facilities are capable of providing 5G and even B5G services, they use different technology solutions and thus have different ways of building, deploying, managing, and operating their 5G networks, e.g. near-commercial solutions for large-scale trials (PO6) and open-source solutions for trials of advanced features (PO4 & 6). This creates the flexibility and agility to support different types of experimenters, such as academic and research-oriented and industrial and development-oriented.
To support the ever-growing demands from these vertical use cases, the IMAGINE-B5G platform is continuously evolving, associated with three platform releases, each of which will be accompanied by the addition of a set of advanced 5G features. The introduction of new advanced 5G features and their integration with the platform (or individual facility) can be facilitated by three open-calls (OC), whose procedures are aligned with the three platform releases. The other target of open calls is to co-create more innovative vertical use cases with external partners, to complement the use cases created by the consortium partners. In this way, more external partners are attracted to either enhance the platform or onboard/test more vertical use cases (PO5).
Depending on the type of the OC projects, the IMAGINE-B5G project supports OC projects in two ways: i) integrate and validate the technologies that extend the platform (PO 7); or ii) onboard and then validate the vertical use cases based on the proposed KPIs and KVIs (POs1, 2 & 5).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Over the last 18 months, the IMAGINE-B5G project has achieved substantial outcomes to reach the 8 PO to different extents.
PO related to the preparation and development of the IMAGINE-B5G platform, and the creation of vertical use cases are well on track, e.g. POs1, 2 & 5. For PO1, the identification of KPIs and KVIs and the definition of business models is the foundation of the entire project and began right after the project kick-off. It has created many inputs on KPIs and KVIs and thus paves the way for designing the IMAGINE-B5G platform to meet the use case requirements. These requirements are the input to PO2, including the platform architecture and advanced features. Since it is not realistic for a single facility to realize all required advanced features, the facility partners need to evaluate the requirements and select the most relevant ones for implementation. One key selection criterion is the use cases which will run experiments in the corresponding facility. Through PO5 and first Open Call (OC), each facility receives a set of vertical experiment use cases which can be supported by the first platform and facility release, and one or two platform extension projects that can enhance the facility based on the expectation published in the OC facility description document. The success of the first OC from PO5 guarantees the smooth progress of the platform development for PO2.
Objectives related to the development of new components and modules are work-in-progress. The defined targets are partially met but will need further efforts to meet the final target. For PO3, some APIs have been developed and/or deployed to support the onboarding of verticals and 3rd parties for them to use the IMAGINE-B5G platform in the fundamental way. These APIs are aligned with the current platform and facility functionalities. When more advanced features will be added into the platform and/or more advanced platform usage is required (e.g. the network exposure), then new APIs will be developed or added later. Similarly, the development of open-source tools and modules are also ongoing, mainly in the France and Portugal facilities. With their continuous efforts and contributions to the open-source communities, more open-source modules will be available by the end of the IMAGINE-B5G project. Note that for PO2, the target of the number of the advanced 5G technology components integrated into the IMAGINE-B5G platform is not realized in a linear and proportional way, given the close relationship between this target and the platform extension projects from OC. Since the first OC projects only kicked off in Nov 2023 and the platform extension projects usually last for 18 months, the actual integrations will take place in the 2nd half of 2024, but the preparation and development have begun. In the end of the first OC (i.e. Apr 2025), the number of advanced 5G technology components will have a significant increase.
Objectives related to the large-scale trials and validation are still in the early stage, which is consistent with the OC status. For PO6, the trials and pilots are dependent on the vertical use cases, mainly from the OC. Since most first OC vertical experiment projects plan their trials in the 2nd and 3rd quarter of 2024, there are not many outcomes on the large-scale trials, pilots, and showcases yet. But the OC projects have made good progress and thus the number of trials will increase significantly by the end of Oct-Nov 2024 when the OC vertical experiment projects will finalize their trials and deliver the outcomes. Similarly, for PO7, the number of validated KPIs and KVIs depends on the number of large-scale trials, which is related to the OC status.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Overall, the results of these first 18 months are generally satisfactory. The adoption by the stakeholders of the 5G testbeds has been encouraged with the digital infrastructure and the frameworks offered by the different facilities.
Access to these technologies has never been easier. For instance, 5G slicing usage has been facilitate with open slice framework.
Not only it gives the opportunity to stakeholders to deploy and measure their application in an enhanced 5G environment but also opportunities in a new open commercial market of broadband. Indeed, it offers PPDR providers to go from narrowband to broadband.
As far as the deployment of the vertical use cases and the stakeholders netapps is underway, the intensity of demonstrations will increase.
Nevertheless, some results are below expectations. In fact, some KPIs are far from being reached, notably the training around the facilities. Likewise, we will encourage research publications.