Periodic Reporting for period 2 - 5G-SOLUTIONS (5G Solutions for European Citizens)
Berichtszeitraum: 2020-12-01 bis 2023-01-31
5G-SOLUTIONS, during its activity period, i.e. 1 May 2019 - 31 January 2023, aimed to validate the performance of 5G capabilities through the creation of 20 case studies, distributed in 4 Living Labs (Factories of the Future, Smart Energy, Smart Cities, Smart Ports and Media & Entertainment) as well as a multi-living lab, in which several use case scenarios are tested simultaneously, thanks to the use of portions of the network, named network slices. The validation also included the new businesses and frog-leap performance advantages in digital content production and consumption, thus connecting and voicing the European communities in the virtual domain as well.
5G-SOLUTIONS defined 20 use cases, and analysed the requirements derived from them, the performance indicators, the KPIs (in more than 140 test campaigns) that were measured and assessed to validate them, the test cases and scenarios, the collection and analysis of the results, and the methodology of the whole process. To establish the benefits brought about by 5G, the project defined both the technical KPIs as well as looking into the business KPIs and value propositions arising for each of these promising use cases.
As part of the validation process 5G-SOLUTIONS was providing and developed technological enablers to facilitate and automate such large-scale process across all use cases and testbeds. These enablers included: a service orchestrator enabling multidomain slicing and 5G service lifecycle automation; an innovative KPI visualization system to facilitate near real-time analysis, presentation, benchmarking and performance validation of 5G network as well as Applications level KPIs; and intent-based APIs for stimulating innovation and fostering the development, portability and provisioning of new innovative applications by SMEs.
The experiments in 5G-SOLUTIONS were conducted over 3 cycles, slightly changing the scope and objectives of the tests, but, above all, exploiting the "lessons learned” of the previous cycles.
The result was the practical demonstration of one of the most important feature of 5G, namely the use of logical subnets with different transmission characteristics, adapted to the needs of the service they are carrying, commonly called “slices”.
Figure 1 depicts a smart city where all the use cases envisaged and tested by 5G-SOLUTIONS are exploited. To prepare for and facilitate this anticipated outcome, main Partners, in particular big industries and SMEs had produced an exploitation plan and, in parallel with the technical verifications, evaluations were carried out from an economic and social point of view, with decidedly encouraging results, both from the point of view of social acceptance and through business plans that show how the use cases are potentially very economically advantageous, as well as citizens and customers may derive benefits in their life with smart services. To demonstrate this, each use case has been assessed with market, user, PESTLE, SWOT with highest potential UCs chosen by LLs, with 4 exemplar business plans completed. Final market assessment for each living lab and use case has been completed along with these exemplar business plans for the LL chosen highest potential UCs.
Furthermore as 5G is recognised to be a disruptive technology for citizens and society lives, and the social acceptance of technology (SAT) has been assessed through the four living labs and the multi living lab as well. This assessment provided a large consensus with an overall good result (i.e. overall score of 73% for propensity to adopt), as well as it provided a tool to identify ethics and social concerns and relative countermeasures (policy options - released as an annex to the Research Ethics Protocol, to be compliant with the EC template) to be considered for the developments of Next Generation Mobile networks. Four policy options are defined and described to address the related ethics and social concerns (see Figure 2), i.e. 1) lack of citizens’ awareness; 2) lack of sufficient inclusive representation; 3) environmental and sustainability risks; 4) need to focus on social trust. Policy options fit with the evolution of 5G and the 6G vision, extending it with need for further awareness programmes and citizens’ engagement (as expected by the new Horizon and JU-SNS calls, as well as the 6G-IA paper “6G Architecture Landscape”).
Furthermore, the project achieved the result consisting in 6 patents filed to date. 5G-SOLUTIONS also disseminated and exploited its technical and business results in the academics, research, industry, and general, domains. Similarly, as partners are members in standard bodies such as the 3GPP, ETSI, ITU-T, IETF, ONF and in various 5G PPP EU frameworks and other H2020 projects, cross-knowledge dissemination have been done.
As part of the validation process 5G-SOLUTIONS was providing and developed technological enablers to facilitate and automate such large-scale process across all use cases and testbeds. These enablers included: a service orchestrator enabling multidomain slicing and 5G service lifecycle automation; an innovative KPI visualization system to facilitate near real-time analysis, presentation, benchmarking and performance validation of 5G network as well as Applications level KPIs; and intent-based APIs for stimulating innovation and fostering the development, portability and provisioning of new innovative applications by SMEs.
The experiments in 5G-SOLUTIONS were conducted over 3 cycles, slightly changing the scope and objectives of the tests, but, above all, exploiting the "lessons learned” of the previous cycles.
The result was the practical demonstration of one of the most important feature of 5G, namely the use of logical subnets with different transmission characteristics, adapted to the needs of the service they are carrying, commonly called “slices”.
Figure 1 depicts a smart city where all the use cases envisaged and tested by 5G-SOLUTIONS are exploited. To prepare for and facilitate this anticipated outcome, main Partners, in particular big industries and SMEs had produced an exploitation plan and, in parallel with the technical verifications, evaluations were carried out from an economic and social point of view, with decidedly encouraging results, both from the point of view of social acceptance and through business plans that show how the use cases are potentially very economically advantageous, as well as citizens and customers may derive benefits in their life with smart services. To demonstrate this, each use case has been assessed with market, user, PESTLE, SWOT with highest potential UCs chosen by LLs, with 4 exemplar business plans completed. Final market assessment for each living lab and use case has been completed along with these exemplar business plans for the LL chosen highest potential UCs.
Furthermore as 5G is recognised to be a disruptive technology for citizens and society lives, and the social acceptance of technology (SAT) has been assessed through the four living labs and the multi living lab as well. This assessment provided a large consensus with an overall good result (i.e. overall score of 73% for propensity to adopt), as well as it provided a tool to identify ethics and social concerns and relative countermeasures (policy options - released as an annex to the Research Ethics Protocol, to be compliant with the EC template) to be considered for the developments of Next Generation Mobile networks. Four policy options are defined and described to address the related ethics and social concerns (see Figure 2), i.e. 1) lack of citizens’ awareness; 2) lack of sufficient inclusive representation; 3) environmental and sustainability risks; 4) need to focus on social trust. Policy options fit with the evolution of 5G and the 6G vision, extending it with need for further awareness programmes and citizens’ engagement (as expected by the new Horizon and JU-SNS calls, as well as the 6G-IA paper “6G Architecture Landscape”).
Furthermore, the project achieved the result consisting in 6 patents filed to date. 5G-SOLUTIONS also disseminated and exploited its technical and business results in the academics, research, industry, and general, domains. Similarly, as partners are members in standard bodies such as the 3GPP, ETSI, ITU-T, IETF, ONF and in various 5G PPP EU frameworks and other H2020 projects, cross-knowledge dissemination have been done.
From a macroscopic point of view, 5G-SOLUTIONS has not directly contributed to the development of 5G, but has strongly influenced it. In fact, the real progress that the project has made has been:
- Demonstrate that 5G performance is useful for the development of specifically identified services
- Demonstrate that from an economic point of view the services enabled by 5G, developed within the project are economically sustainable and accepted by society (the only known case)
- Influence development (through regulations, vendors and operators) and deployment (operators) based on the "lessons learned" of the experiments.
- Simulate the coexistence of multiple services on a single physical network (MLL)
Zooming in into the specific results, the most important innovations beyond the state of the art have been:
- Zero touch automation, involving AI/ML. 5G-SOLUTIONS created, deployed and integrated zero-touch automation (ZTA) mechanisms for network and application optimisation actions. The ZTA solution, which allows the definition of rules specific to the 5G vertical, can be used in conjunction with Machine Learning methods to provide for proactive and adaptable behaviour.
- Validating 5G technological building blocks from technical and business perspectives in the context of living labs: 5G in the context of numerous use cases and living labs: 5G NR, mmWave, VNF, slices, edge, NSA, NPN.
- KPI Visualization system. Within the scope of 5G-SOLUTIONS project, an innovative smart KPI visualization system has been designed and implemented, leveraging cognitive machine learning techniques, big data analytics and cloud computing approaches, for the facilitation and automation of the presentation, benchmarking and performance validation of a 5G network and application level KPIs against specific target 5G values.
- Exemplar Business Models were created with the aim of these developed business plans to outline a potentially viable roadmap for the commercialisation of the chosen UC action, providing a roadmap for how the specific 5G solutions can progress forwards to potentially viable market entry. These plans examined the specific challenges/roadblocks/actions required for launch, through assessment of the true commercial viability of the proposed solutions and investigations into the potential impact of the solutions to the industry vertical, broader impacted areas (society/environment/ economic) and the potential benefit for the potential future commercial leader. The work on 5G-SOLUTIONS business models also resulted in contributionsed to the ongoing 6G-IA white paper on “5G and Beyond 5G Ecosystem Business Modellings”.
- Demonstrate that 5G performance is useful for the development of specifically identified services
- Demonstrate that from an economic point of view the services enabled by 5G, developed within the project are economically sustainable and accepted by society (the only known case)
- Influence development (through regulations, vendors and operators) and deployment (operators) based on the "lessons learned" of the experiments.
- Simulate the coexistence of multiple services on a single physical network (MLL)
Zooming in into the specific results, the most important innovations beyond the state of the art have been:
- Zero touch automation, involving AI/ML. 5G-SOLUTIONS created, deployed and integrated zero-touch automation (ZTA) mechanisms for network and application optimisation actions. The ZTA solution, which allows the definition of rules specific to the 5G vertical, can be used in conjunction with Machine Learning methods to provide for proactive and adaptable behaviour.
- Validating 5G technological building blocks from technical and business perspectives in the context of living labs: 5G in the context of numerous use cases and living labs: 5G NR, mmWave, VNF, slices, edge, NSA, NPN.
- KPI Visualization system. Within the scope of 5G-SOLUTIONS project, an innovative smart KPI visualization system has been designed and implemented, leveraging cognitive machine learning techniques, big data analytics and cloud computing approaches, for the facilitation and automation of the presentation, benchmarking and performance validation of a 5G network and application level KPIs against specific target 5G values.
- Exemplar Business Models were created with the aim of these developed business plans to outline a potentially viable roadmap for the commercialisation of the chosen UC action, providing a roadmap for how the specific 5G solutions can progress forwards to potentially viable market entry. These plans examined the specific challenges/roadblocks/actions required for launch, through assessment of the true commercial viability of the proposed solutions and investigations into the potential impact of the solutions to the industry vertical, broader impacted areas (society/environment/ economic) and the potential benefit for the potential future commercial leader. The work on 5G-SOLUTIONS business models also resulted in contributionsed to the ongoing 6G-IA white paper on “5G and Beyond 5G Ecosystem Business Modellings”.