5G MiEdge: Millimeter-wave Edge cloud as an enabler for 5G ecosystem

Project Information

5G MiEdge

Grant agreement ID: 723171

DOI

10.3030/723171

Project closed

EC signature date 4 July 2016

Start date 1 July 2016

End date 30 June 2019

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost

€ 1 494 773,75

EU contribution

€ 1 494 773,75

Coordinated by

FRAUNHOFER GESELLSCHAFT ZUR FORDERUNG DER ANGEWANDTEN FORSCHUNG EV
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - 5G MiEdge (5G MiEdge: Millimeter-wave Edge cloud as an enabler for 5G ecosystem)

Reporting period: 2018-07-01 to 2019-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The major vision of 5G-MiEdge is to investigate, develop and demonstrate a novel technology that combines ultra-broadband millimeter-wave (mmWave) access and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) as a perfect matching of technologies that integrate into each other into a single holistic 5G ecosystem, enabling highly efficient network operations, real-time service delivery, and the ultimate personal experience. The term for this technology is MiEdge, for millimeter-wave enhanced mobile edge computing.
1.1 What is the problem/issue being addressed?
The main idea in 5G-MiEdge is that a fully effective deployment of MEC is only possible by relying on a very high data rate radio access technology (RAT) as well as backhauling technology. For this scenario, the mmWave technology is perfect, not only to enable high data rate traffic, but also wireless backhauling to complement wired backhauling, when and where necessary.
1.2 Why is it important for society?
This technology opens up many possible scenarios that will greatly benefit our society and are not possible with the current state-of-the-art technology.
1.3 What are the overall objectives?
The overall objectives of 5G-MiEdge are
• Research, develop, and prove the 5G based MiEdge concept
• Develop transmission schemes and protocols of mmWave access/backhauling aimed to assist the mobile edge cloud with caching/prefetching
• Develop novel ultra-lean and inter-operable control signaling over 3GPP LTE to provide liquid ubiquitous coverage in 5G networks based on acquisition of context information and forecasting of traffic requirements, in order to enable a proactive orchestration of communication/computation resources of the mmWave edge cloud.
• Develop user/application centric orchestration algorithms and protocols to adapt radio and computation resources of mmWave edge cloud in 5G networks
• Develop a joint 5G test-bed integrating mmWave edge cloud, liquid RAN C-plane, and user/application centric orchestration to foster an effective impact of 5G MiEdge in both Europe and Japan
• Contribute to the definition of 5G mobile communications standards in 3GPP and IEEE

Conclusion: Until now, there are no products that meet this demands and the developments in the project are still very relevant. We were able to show that the concepts and ideas do work on our developed prototypes in extensive field trials and are confident to continue our research in follow-up projects.

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

In the final period of the project, there were 10 scheduled deliverables.

• D1.4 Final report on joint EU/JP vision, business models and eco-system impact
This deliverable provides a report on the actions accomplished to align and synergize the work of the two consortia composing the 5G-MiEdge project.

• D2.2 Design of mmWave ultra broadband access for 5G
This deliverable reports second year results of WP2, mmWave ultra broadband access for highest capacity 5G scenarios.

• D2.3 Design of mmWave antennas for 5G enabled stadium
This deliverable reports details related to the development of millimeter-wave antennas and measurement system for 5G enabled stadium as considered in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic use case. Two types of antennas were designed for millimeter wave shower and backhaul link respectively. The compact antenna test range to be used for the measurements of high gain antennas in limited space is described too.

• D2.4 Method of site specific deployment of mmWave edge cloud
This deliverable reports second year results of WP2, specifically the methods of site specific deployment, optimization and prototyping of mmWave edge cloud.

• D3.2 Integration of mmWave edge cloud into 5G mobile networks
This deliverable is the final report of Task 3.1 which studied on integration of mmWave edge cloud into 5G mobile networks. It reports on an architecture for integrating edge computing into 5G mobile networks, interworking between 3GPP and non-3GPP RAN, control signaling, service handover behavior to enable 5G liquid edge cloud to support multi-layer, multi-RAT and ultra-dense small cell deployment.

• D3.3 Context information management to create traffic map for mmWave edge cloud
This deliverable is the final report of Task 3.2. It reports on the activities of Work Package 3 on the management and exploitation of context information and on learning algorithms for radio environment and traffic map prediction.

• D3.4 User/application centric orchestration of mmWave edge cloud
This deliverable is the final report of Task 3.3. It reports on the latest activities of Work Package 3 on the user/application centric orchestration to realize 5G liquid edge cloud. In particular, the deliverable describes algorithms for jointly optimal allocation of radio, and computation resources, data prefetching, load distribution, and resilient design against the drawbacks of mmWave communications.

• D4.2 5G MiEdge test-bed integrating mmWave access, liquid RAN C-plane, and user/application centric orchestration
This deliverable reports on feasibility and availability of all key 5G MiEdge network components and algorithms and their measured performance after implementation.

• D4.3 MiEdge field trials integrated in 5G-Berlin Testbed toward Tokyo Olympic 2020
This deliverable reports on extensive field trials performed with the developed 5G MiEdge components and prototypes integrated in the testbeds in Berlin and Tokyo.

• D5.3 Final report on dissemination, standards, regulation and exploitation
This deliverable outlines the 5G-MiEdge project dissemination, standards, regulation and exploitation activities, with main focus on the third year achievements. The main project results have been disseminated through international conferences and journals papers, and in special events and workshops that focused on topics tightly related to the 5G-MiEdge technologies. The main project achievements have been also exploited by impacting standards, engaging with regulators, filing patents, and through their integration in courses in the academia and, commercially, in future products of the industrial partners.

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)

In the entire project duration, almost everything went according to plan. We have delivered research on use cases and scenarios, requirements for a deployment of mmWave edge clouds and evaluated our dissemination, regulation and standardization activities. During the final period, we verified the architecture and developed concepts on prototypes of 5G MiEdge network components and performed extensive field trials that were published in the WP4 deliverables D4.2 and D4.3.
The 5G-MiEdge project managed to show a global impact on different geographical areas and ecosystems.

The presence in the consortium of industrial players and of operators, active in two important geographical areas like Europe and Japan, among the most active ones for the first trials of 5G enabling technologies, gives 5G-MiEdge the opportunity to best leverage on the technical project results, which start to be more and more important as the project proceeds in its plan of record.

Besides the impact on ecosystems and industry, the project also had some impact on academia and research due to the numerous scientific events, journal publications and standardization work.

Illustration of the 5G-MiEdge concept