The 5G-Crosshaul Project targets innovations around three pillars of the future 5G transport network. These include: (1) Innovations for data-plane integration across heterogeneous transmission technologies; (2) Innovations for a unified programmable control; and (3) Novel network applications for optimizing the system performance according to specific objectives. All these innovations are combined together into an architecture framework that takes into account both technical and techno-economic requirements from the stakeholders of the value chain, namely operators, vendors and service providers.
All the above innovations are driven primarily by the need to make the future 5G transport network more flexible in order to ease and accelerate the deployment of new services, whilst guaranteeing cost-efficient use of the resources. This results into a direct socio-economic impact, through lower cost and higher efficiency for the infrastructure stakeholders (operators, vendors, and service providers), and the end user customer in terms of better service (quality and ubiquitous access), and lower bills. The overall society will also see the benefit of driving the future transport network towards more flexibility and cost-efficiency, whilst supporting the various services envisioned in future 5G. In addition, the innovations from the 5G-Crosshaul project are expected to give the industrial companies (large, medium and small) in 5G-Crosshaul and the extended European 5G-PPP community a privileged position and competitive advantage in the European and global markets through new generations of flexible and innovative access and core networks solutions. An exploitation plan is being defined to assess the possible impact on the product and services roadmaps of the vendors and operators involved in the project.
In order to ensure wide-reach of the innovations developed in the project, the consortium members have been very active in disseminating the project concept and early results to the European community (inside and outside 5G-PPP) and the wider international research and industrial community. The consortium has promoted the envisioned concepts and R&D achievements through various types of dissemination activities. In particular, the project has successfully delivered:
- 91 papers - in several prestigious journals
- 74 presentations/panels/webinars , and 14 (Co-)organized workshops
- 28 demonstrations including at flagship events such as MWC'16 and MWC'17
- 35 normative contributions feeding into key standardization specifications
- 25 contributions for information purpose in several standardization bodies and forums such as NGMN, ITU-T, FSAN, ETSI, IEEE, BBF, ONF.
