Application-aware User-centric Programmable Architectures for 5G Multi-tenant Networks

Project Information

5G-AURA

Grant agreement ID: 675806

DOI 10.3030/675806

Project closed

EC signature date 7 August 2015

Start date 1 October 2015

End date 30 September 2019

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost € 3 545 458,56

EU contribution € 3 545 458,56

Coordinated by

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - 5G-AURA (Application-aware User-centric Programmable Architectures for 5G Multi-tenant Networks)

Reporting period: 2017-10-01 to 2019-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

According to estimates from the EC (http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?action=display&doc_id=17802) 5G networks will create 2.3 million new jobs. This implies that engineers with appropriate cross-sectoral training and expertise will be necessary. ETNs are the best instrument for providing cross-sectoral training to ESRs, allowing them to be exposed to both theory and practice under the guidance of experienced researchers.

5Gaura is a multi-disciplinary training-through-research ETN of ESRs and senior supervisors committed to develop a unifying framework to design 5G programmable multi-tenant networks, in order to sustain and enable the coexistence and coordination of networking, software and cloud technologies, to ensure network programmability and efficient resource orchestration, to minimize control and signaling overhead, to support multi-tenancy and scalability, and to promote the development of new business models for emerging services.

The main research objective of 5Gaura is to effectively harness the potential of all these innovative and heterogeneous features and introduce and optimize a programmable multi-tenant network architectural framework.

The main training objective of 5Gaura is to recruit 14 ESRs and to provide them with personalized training on theoretical and applied sciences, in order to allow them to become recognized leaders in academia and industry.


Importance for the Society
The socio-economic impact of 5G is expected to be very important and was recently evaluated, qualitatively and quantitatively, in a study prepared for the EC: http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?action=display&doc_id=17802. Based on the study, 5G is expected to generate benefits of 62.5 billion euro per annum in four main vertical markets (automotive, healthcare, transport and utilities) in 2025. Benefits of 50.6 billion euro are expected in four major environments (smart cities, non-urban areas, smart homes and smart workplaces). 63% of these benefits will arise for business and 37% will be provided for consumers and society.

5Gaura will contribute to the achievements of this expected socio-economic impact with new scientific results in major research areas that include all layers of the protocol stack, including high-frequency access technologies, such as millimeter-wave communication and visible light communication, cell-less cellular network architectures, multi-tenancy, and network-slicing. Based on http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?action=display&doc_id=17802 it is envisioned that the ability to create “your own network” amounts to the maturation of the concept of virtualization and, in non-urban areas, it is considered to be a major enabler for realizing a single multi-tenant network that will allow multiple mobile network operators and verticals to share the costs of the physical network infrastructure. 5G, through its inherent enabling of multi-tenanting for mixed uses and users, is forecasted to play a considerable role in providing an economically sustainable ICT-enabling infrastructure for the rural environment. The virtualization capabilities of 5G and the concept of network slicing are expected to provide key economic benefits by reducing the network capex through the pooling of network resources. In addition, 5Gaura will contribute to the employability needs of 5G, by providing advanced training to 14 young academic and industrial researchers.

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

Maintenance and update of the website, and the social media platforms
Maintenance and update of the Internet-based video-conferencing training platform
Maintenance and update of the public and secure/private repository
Execution of three training schools
Execution of four complementary course
Execution of the second workshop
Execution of the final conference
Execution of three open days
Execution of one industrial dissemination day
Participation to the European Researcher Night
Execution of 13 public talks given by the ESRs
Publication of one newspaper article
Realization of two video clips
Realization of three brochures
Realization of eight newsletters
Publication (and submission) of 15 journal and conference papers
Filling of one patent
Implementation of the open access publication strategy by making available all published results in open access repositories, such as ArXiv, ResearchGate, OpenAire
Submission of all deliverables
Achievement of all milestones
Execution of regular meetings among the beneficiaries

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)

All the recruited ESRs have worked on their respective WPs and have provided important contributions beyond the state of the art of research in their respective fields.

WP1: Technology Innovation and Integration at the Physical Layer
CNRS-1 has proved that the elevation of the base stations may play a fundamental role for optimizing the performance of cellular networks and that an optimal elevation and density of base station exist for optimizing the coverage probability and average rate. CNRS-2 has developed new methodologies for the analysis of cellular networks by taking spatial correlations into account and quantified the gain of different network deployments. He has evaluated the integration of wireless and visible light technologies in indoor environments and meta-materials.
FASM-1 has developed new antennas based on transverse electromagnetic horn design principles for low and high frequencies.

WP2: Cell-Less User Centric Resource Allocation and Mobility Management
UPC-1 has proposed new strategies for jointly optimizing the access and backhaul parts of future heterogeneous dense networks.
UPC2 has developed new handover policies based on software defined networking and edge cloud computing principles.
UoY-1 has developed new load balancing and cell association techniques based on particle swarm optimization principles.

WP3: Service-Oriented Mechanisms and RAN Architectures
UNIKL-1 has proposed new resource dedication strategies for mobile machine type communication networks based on grouped random access.
UNIKL-2 has worked on the design and optimization of service-oriented traffic management schemes based on mobile edge cloud computing.
UoY-2 has proposed new strategies for exploiting edge-cloud computing paradigms to enable programmable proximity-based services in commercial and social environments.
UPC-3 has designed a new dynamic network architecture that incorporates software defined networking and network function virtualization to simplify the system’s management.

WP4: Network Virtualization and Multi-Tenancy
NEC-1 has introduced the concept of network slice broker to leverage the network slicing paradigm in the radio access of 5G cellular networks.
NEC-2 has introduced new architectures for multi-tenancy that exploit cloud edge computing.
OTE-1 has conducted a detailed techno-economic analysis of the cloud customer premises equipment model and has demonstrated its economic profitability.
UPC-4 has proposed an innovative standard-compliant architecture for enabling the end-to-end slicing of network resources belonging to heterogeneous infrastructure providers.

5Gaura Reference Scenario with Logo