Virtual Presence in Moving Objects through 5G

Project Information

PriMO-5G

Grant agreement ID: 815191

DOI

10.3030/815191

Project closed

EC signature date 26 June 2018

Start date 1 July 2018

End date 30 June 2021

Funded under

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

Total cost

€ 2 000 000,00

EU contribution

€ 2 000 000,00

Coordinated by

AALTO KORKEAKOULUSAATIO SR
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - PriMO-5G (Virtual Presence in Moving Objects through 5G)

Reporting period: 2020-07-01 to 2021-06-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The PriMO-5G project involves partners from several countries from Europe and a number of partners from South Korea, who together are addressing objectives of the ‘EUK-02-2018:5G’ call in the area “a) Focus on mmWave and super broadband services”. Specifically, the PriMO-5G EU aims to demonstrate an end-to-end 5G system providing immersive video services for moving objects. This is achieved by local and cross-continental testbeds that integrate radio access and core networks developed by different project partners. The cross-continental testbeds will show the end-to-end operations of proposed PriMO-5G firefighting use cases.

Fires are a growing challenge for the modern society, with increasing evidence of rapid urbanisation and climate change effects (e.g. global warming, shorter precipitation seasons etc.) fuelling both the scale and frequency of the occurrence of these fires. The aforementioned prevailing trends and the dynamic nature of fires make firefighting operations increasingly complex, of high risk and demanding in terms of required firefighting resources. The use of increasingly sophisticated public safety communications systems and aerial support systems is now critical for enhancing safety and efficiency of firefighting operations. To that end, the PriMO-5G project is exploring the use of 5G technologies and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones for firefighting operations. For this, the PriMO-5G project has specified firefighting use cases that consider both forest fires (wildfires) and urban fires. These use cases take into account contextual differences between those two environments and envision how 5G-related solutions (e.g. network slicing, edge computing etc.) may be leveraged to support firefighting operations both from the ground and from the air using drones.

The overall objectives of the PriMO-5G project may be summarized as follows:
• To demonstrate an end-to-end 5G system providing immersive video services for moving objects
• To develop technologies of millimetre (mmWave) access, 5G core networks, and artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted communications fulfilling requirements for above objective.
• To provide input to 5G standardization and spectrum regulation activities.

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

The work performed by the PriMO-5G project up to the end Year 2 (reporting period 2) and main results achieved so far include:
• Derivation of an overall end-to-end system architecture which will be used as a reference of the PriMO-5G component and system demonstrations. This architecture derivation work has established a foundation of future input to 5G standardization by surveying the current 3GPP architecture and informing the project on identifying areas of potential improvement.
• Demonstration of key 5G components (radio, edge and core) and applications contributed by different partners for the PriMO-5G experimentation activities and eventual end-to-end system implementations.
• Early system integration activities as well as development work towards intercontinental demos. These activities occurred ahead of schedule alleviated some of the impacts continued Covid-19 lockdown measures and travel restrictions. This includes end-to-end system developed constituting 5G NR mmWave gNB/UE emulation and standalone 5GC.
• Investigated novel positioning techniques and innovative beamforming algorithms for a mmWave high mobility scenario.
• Innovation of AI-assisted communication technologies for various networking and edge computing problems such as resource allocation, caching, constrained communication, and development of intelligent UAVs.
• PriMO-5G research results and technology innovations have been disseminated in over 18 leading journals and conferences. Moreover, the project has taken initiative to amplify awareness of project results by (co-)organising dissemination events.

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)

Potential business and societal impacts of the project include:
• Fully functional architecture including interoperable 5G components will increase compatibility which deliver highly competitive products that facilitate market deployment of 5G networks and open up interesting business opportunities for cross-domain (inter-operator) 5G service provisioning.
• The mmWave, AI-assisted communication and edge technologies developed in the project can be used by manufacturers and operators in the consortium to lead the development of standard essential 5G products. Moreover, researchers, graduate students in particular, who have been working on these technologies are being trained to become highly skilled workers in the future for 5G development and beyond; thus, it ensures that Europe and Korea continue to be competitive forces in the field of communication systems.
• The testbeds and demos by the project provide a showcase for technologies (UAV, mmWave, MEC, AI etc.) that could be of potential interest to 5G industry, as well as, drone and public safety communities. Additional considerations exploitation of PriMO-5G technical implementations in other verticals, through implementation of the intercontinental remote manufacturing demo.
• The firefighting demos proposed developed throughout the project lifetime have potential to further highlight the potential of 5G technologies in combating increasingly common fire incidents.
• Aside from adding to the current body of knowledge in networking and edge computing research, innovations highlighted in the project were designed and developed with the goal of providing better services to people in terms of public safety and convenience.

PriMO-5G testbed at Yonsei University

PriMO-5G end-to-end system demos

Illustration of PriMO-5G urban firefighting use case