NRG-5 successfully completed the laboratory, real-life trial integration and evaluation and validation processes based on three use cases for the energy domain based on the 5G-enabled next-generation smart metering device (5G-NORM).
In the final period, NRG-5 was mainly concentrated on two forefront actions: a) The final development and validation phase for all the project VNFs and the related services built and integrated on top of them b) The dissemination and the increasing of societal impact of NRG-5 results via the participation on the overall consortium in EUCNC 2019 and two open days that collected many stakeholders participation from communication and energy domains.
Two kinds of VNFs was developed and tested both in lab and in real environment. The first set comprised the general-purpose VNFs embedding the following functionalities: i) terminal service discovery and supporting mesh networks with arbitrary protocols for physical, MAC, network and transport layers (vTSD), ii) increasing resilience and speeding up computation at the edge via adaptable data caches (vMCM), iii) better handling mobility based on GPS coordinates and NRG-5 presence in an area (vMME), and iv) hardening security for particular communication and data reporting paradigms that are considered critical for the energy domain with a strong focus on blockchains (vAAA and vBCP).
The second set comprised utility centred VNFs as: (vESR) to calculate and optimize set point in the micro-grid, energy storage systems (vDES) to handle 2nd life batteries and EV charging station, (vRES) for the renewable energy sources management, (vPMU) phasor measurement units and the drone VNFs for automated video analysis (vMPA), automated drones control (vDFC) for overviewing power lines status.
All these VNFs have been used as software modules and units for the different services provided by NRG-5 finally demonstrated and integrated into the real environment: Advanced Metering Infrastructures as a Service (AMIaaS), Preventive Maintenance as a Service (PMaaS) and Dispatchable Demand Response as a Service (DDRaaS), corresponding to UC1-UC3. These 3 extremely demanding 5G Smart Energy vertical use cases were developed to satisfy requirements as Massive MTC (UC1 and UC2), Enhanced Mobile Broadband (UC2), Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communication (UC3). They were handled introducing an NRG-5 extended Mobile Edge Cloud (xMEC) node aligned to the overall 5G-PPP 5G reference architecture.
From a platform perspective, NRG-5 provided a MAPE-K control loop for optimizing the use of resources at the xMEC level and for deciding over optimal deployment options. Depth analysis of energy-related Critical Infrastructures SLAs was also performed. From an SDN standpoint, NRG-5 used successfully OpenStack as a virtualization platform managed by the ETSI OSM MANO framework handling the complete integration of the two platforms.
