New RAN TEchniques for 5G UltrA-dense Mobile networks

Project Information

TeamUp5G

Grant agreement ID: 813391

DOI

10.3030/813391

Project closed

EC signature date 20 August 2018

Start date 1 January 2019

End date 30 June 2023

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 3 722 253,48

EU contribution

€ 3 722 253,48

Coordinated by

UNIVERSIDAD CARLOS III DE MADRID
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - TeamUp5G (New RAN TEchniques for 5G UltrA-dense Mobile networks)

Reporting period: 2021-01-01 to 2023-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

“New RAN TEchniques for 5G UltrA-dense Mobile networks”, TeamUp5G, is a European Training Network in the frame of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks of the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 framework. TeamUp5G wanted to place creative young researchers in front of the real world, enabling them to work on real-life technical issues, working across multiple European countries and organizations. We also wanted to provide them with communications skills, the ability to work in groups and an understanding of integrity and ethics in research.
With the continuous increase of data rates and the number of people using mobile communications, wireless connections are evolving towards 5G. To fulfil the user satisfaction and a plethora of challenging requirements, pivotal to the evolution towards 5G are the ultra-dense networks with small-cells. The network solutions have inherent technical limitations, e.g. limited available spectrum, the need to coexist within complex environments of multiple heterogeneous technologies and users. Possibly the most important challenge is the demand of increasing data rates per km2. The project focused is to provide solutions for ultra-dense small cell systems as an important component in future heterogeneous 5G networks (commercial deployment in 2020) and beyond.
The research objectives of TeamUp5G addressed the following three problems: Interference Management, waveforms and Massive MIMO, Dynamic Spectrum Management and Optimisation and Energy Consumption Reduction. The research team of 15 young researches supervised by committed experts from the industry and academia advanced the state of the art with the design of novel physical/link/medium access control algorithms and protocols, new dynamic spectrum management, opportunistic optimisation of radio resources and cognitive techniques, together with self-organization capabilities, and techniques to save energy. Both mobile broadband and internet of things applications and traffic were harmonised. The new developed techniques were analysed by simulation and prototyping and some show-cases (immersive video, drones) were developed. The TeamUp5G consortium was integrated by eight beneficiaries (Aarhus Universitet, International Hellenic University, Eclexys SAGL, Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Nokia Spain SA, Projecto Desenvolvimento Manutencao Formacao e Consultadorialda, Pietrzyk Slawomir, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) and eleven partners, (OEPM, TID, TLN, UNL, UBI, UAV, ISCTE, UOWM, AUD, CTTC and HEIA-FR/HESS-SO) all of them coordinated by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
TeamUp5G’s EU funding adds up to 3.72 million Euro between 2019 and June 2023. Project 813391.

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

TeamUp5G European Training Network has overall progressed according to its initial planning. TeamUp5G scientific work during the project has been devoted to the definition of reference scenarios and use cases, physical and access layer protocols, spectrum sharing and carrier aggregation. At the same time, energy efficiency has been set as a goal to be accomplished in all these designs. Some steps have been initiated towards prototyping a selection of the developed algorithms and implementation of a proof of concept.
Selected use cases have been Emergency Drone, Multiplayer Game and Live events with VR among others. Concerning PHY/MAC layer, protocols and algorithms are being defined to align the interference, reduce the need of channel estimation and improve coexistence of radar and communications. Together with conventional frequencies, millimetre-wave and visible light are considered. Regarding spectrum sharing, centralized/decentralized solutions have been addressed, e.g. either cell-based or cell-free topologies, massive machine-type communications or ultra-reliable low-latency communications. Some additional activity has been devoted to study the scenarios, requirements, and challenges of energy efficiency in 5G and beyond networks. On the other hand, the specification and design of the TeamUp5G proof of concept has been prepared to validate the solutions developed by the researchers. In this way, prototyping becomes a tool to identify additional synergies and potential for cooperation between peer-early stage researchers.
Concerning the non-technical activities, the project’s training plan was defined in the first project year. During the second year, TeamUp5G has been affected by the COVID-19 outbreak, and several measures have been - and are being - taken to mitigate these effects. Since the realization of face-to-face activities has not been allowed or advised, on line activities have become very relevant and have allowed us to follow the planned training and to progress in standardization, communication and dissemination. The COVID limitation caused the necessity to extend the project 6 months and ended in June 30th 2023. The rest of the project life cycle was developed as it was planned. The network has organized 5 Workshops, 3 Seminar, 3 Summer or Winter Schools,14 Online Courses and one MOOC. Additionally, the communication activities have included press releases, communication campaigns, the website, that was operative from Dec 2018 and updated regularly since then (https://teamup5g.webs.tsc.uc3m.es/) announcement and participation in workshops and conferences, presence on social media, participation in 30 dissemination events to the general public, and publication of 76 articles or Newsletters.

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)

Small cells (SCs) are formed by low-power and reduced-size wireless access points that operate in licensed spectrum and are operator-managed. They are low-cost elements that transmit with a low transmit power. The use of SCs is proposed in different standards like 3GPP HSPA and LTE/LTE-A, 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 and IEEE802.16 to solve coverage and capacity problems. Thus, SCs offer great advantages such as better coverage and higher data rate and can access new services. Due to their low power transmission, SCs are efficient from an environmental point of view and can potentially contribute to up to a 60% reduction of power consumption in the global communications infrastructure. However, SC solutions present the challenge of interference management. TeamUp5G paved the way to the use of millimetre-wave frequencies and massive MIMO as emerging technologies that will certainly increase network performance from SCs while reducing interference. For an even more effective use of the spectrum, visible light communications (VLC) was capitalized as a means of moving part of the indoor wireless traffic to the wide and unregulated optical bandwidth. The VLC access points integrated in the cellular network are usually denoted as attocells, and also known as light-fidelity (LiFi) and are considered a promising technology for 5G communications and beyond. Last but not least, authentication and privacy-preserving schemes for 5G SCN will be obtained, where it is important to protect user identity, location privacy, among others.
TeamUp5G results have the potential to bring innovation to products that are already in the market but need an evolution. The explosion of SCs requires solutions such as those proposed in TeamUp5G, namely the ability to mitigate interference and optimise the network resources.

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