5GCity, Adaptive Management of 5G Services to Support Critical Events in Cities

Impact of the project

The impact of the project results has been divided into three sections. The first highlights the scientific-technological impact of the research results. The second details the impact translated into the transfer of technology and knowledge to entities external to the project (industry, companies, standardization bodies, research centers, etc.). The last section describes the impact of the results on university education (degree, master's degree, doctorate, etc.)

Scientific-technological impact


  • Definition of architecture and integral NFV prototype for multi-RPA infrastructures with limited resources based on Open Source MANO and lightweight containers.
  • Development of a virtualized environment for multi-UAV network emulation (VENUE: Virtualized Environment for multi-UAV network emulation) including a discrete event simulator for 5G, WiFi, and ad hoc networks.
  • Extension of the project's use cases incorporating the laboratory validation of an algorithm for the efficient management of energy consumption in drone fleets.
  • Conducting orchestration experiments of NFV services on platforms with intermittent availability.
  • Development of a tool and an analytical model to determine the performance of a virtualized LTE EPC, including a traffic generation model and a virtualized EPC emulation environment.
  • Development of a methodology for the planning, automatic deployment, and dynamic provision of scalable resources of a virtualized EPC that minimizes consumed resources and delays depending on the load.
  • Design of an ETSI-NFV compatible architecture for the 5G network core.
  • Proposal for the integration/unification of the architecture of the 3GPP 5G network core with the architecture proposed by ETSI based on network slicing.
  • Development of an analytical model and algorithm for the sizing of 5G radio resources in a RAN slice.
  • Analysis of procedures and design of strategies for the management and planning of the spectrum in Small Cells.
  • Proposal to improve the transmission procedures in NB-IoT for the massive support of IoT devices in 5G.
  • Design and experimental validation of an analytical model of the energy consumption of an NB-IoT device for massive IoT in 5G.
  • Experimental evaluation of NB-IoT technology to meet the requirements of massive IoT in 5G under different device configurations.
  • Proposals for the improvement of security and capacity in LoRaWan networks and their integration in a 4G / 5G EPC.
  • Proposal for the extension of the 3GPP Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) standard, with the protocols and algorithms necessary to develop a multi-tenant environment that allows different operators to share an IAB infrastructure.
  • Performance analysis in interoperability between LTE C-V2X technology and the alternative based on IEEE 802.11p, in the field of vehicular communications.
  • Improve knowledge in Fog, Edge, and NFV, advancing in the investigation of how Fog / Edge and NFV can be merged to achieve the installation and implementation of end-to-end service, following the specifications presented by ETSI NFV and ETSI MEC.
  • Advancement in the SDN architecture for xPON networks, as well as in the development of an evolved distributed DBA-PON’s that offers energy savings and quality of service.
  • Mechanisms for dynamic optimal location of functionalities in the control and data plane of the 5G architecture.
  • Innovation in the SDN control plane for Synchronous Ethernet and Precision Time Protocol networks. The only similar work is the ReversePTP proposed by Technion, but its objective is not to manage PTP networks, but rather to synchronize the execution of SDN actions on the equipment.
  • Mechanisms to improve Traffic Steering on networks with slicing. This system has to be compatible with the IETF proposal for chaining of network functions (Service Function Chaining, RFC 7665).
  • Design, deployment, and performance evaluation of a reconfigurable architecture, based on Kubernetes and containers, capable of being deployed in low-performance systems such as sensors.
  • Design of a sensor virtualization mechanism compatible with ETSI NFV.
  • Evaluation of the traffic engineering mechanism based on SDN (DynPaC) and its deployment in the SN4I (Smart Networks for Industries) infrastructure as a basic mechanism to ensure resilience and bandwidth.
  • Deployment in an experimental infrastructure of 5G technologies in Industry 4.0 (SN4I) of the architecture of reconfigurable sensors integrating them into ETSI OSM, their virtualization mechanisms, and application to an industrial use case.


Impact on technology and knowledge transfer


  • The drone test mockup developed within the framework of this project has been selected by the ETSI OSM as the reference PoC (Proof of Concept) of its technology

https://osm.etsi.org/wikipub/index.php / OSM_PoC_10_Automated_Deployment_of_an_IP_Telephony_Service_on_UAVs_using_OSM

This mockup has also received the award for the best testbed from ETSI OSM release 8 (https://osm.etsi.org/news-events/osm-awards).

  • Collaboration with the company Real Time Innovations (Inc.) (USA) http://www.rti.com, world leader in the development of real-time middleware and the first vendor in the implementation of the OMG Data Distribution Service standard (DDS). RTI licenses and supports its RTI Connext product for the federation of SDN controllers as part of the 5G network control plane.
  • Collaboration with the companies NEC Laboratories Europe, Heidelberg, Germany, with DOCOMO Communications Lab. Europe, Munich, Germany, and with the Universita di Pisa, Italy together with UGR and UPC for the edition of the Special Issue "Testbeds for Future Wireless Networks" published in Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/wcmc/si/858719/
  • European projects with which it has collaborated: H2020 5GinFire, H2020 5GRANGE, H2020 5GTransformers, H2020 5G-VINI, H2020 5GCity. - Financed proposals in which 5GCity results have been obtained: H2020 5G Growth, H2020 5GDIVE, H2020 5GTOURS, H2020 Labyrinth, H2020 IA @ EDGE.
  • Project awarded 5G-CLARITY “Beyond 5G Multi-Tenant Private Networks Integrating Cellular, Wi-Fi, and LiFi, Powered by Artificial Intelligence and Intent Based Policy”, aimed at the integration of public and non-public 5G networks, financed in the call H2020 ICT-20 from the EU.
  • Research centers with which it has collaborated directly in 5GCity activities: IMDEA Networks, Airforce Research Laboratory (USA), Instituto Nacional de Telecomunicações (Portugal), Inatel (Brazil), National Institute of Aerospace Technology, University of Aveiro, University from Bristol, NetLab from the University of Glasgow, Multiscale Networked Systems from the University of Amsterdam.


Relationship with standardization bodies:

  • Contribution in ETSI GR NFV-EVE 012, J. A. Ordonez-Lucena, J.J. Ramos-Munoz, J.M. Lopez-Soler, P. Ameigeiras, et al., “Network Functions Virtualization (NFV); Evolution and Ecosystem; Report on Network Slicing Support with ETSI NFV Architecture Framework, ”Dec. 2017.
  • Contribution to standardization bodies: L. Geng, L. Qiang, J. Ordonez-Lucena, O. Adamuz-Hinojosa, P. Ameigeiras, D. López, L. Contreras, “COMS Architecture,” IETF draftr-geng-coms -architecture-02, March 2018.


Impact on university education: transfer of knowledge in bachelor's, master's, and doctorate


  • The results obtained have allowed the application and granting of an International Collaboration Project of the “Visiting Scholars” Program of the University of Granada, together with the University of Aalto (Finland).
  • Research stay at the MOSAIC LAB of the Electronic Systems Wireless Communication Networks Department of the University of Aalto (Finland) led by Professor Tarik Taleb.
  • Research stay in the Wireless Communication Networks group of the Department of Electronic Systems of the University of Aalborg (Denmark), a laboratory associated with Nokia, directed by Professor Preben Mogensen.
  • Research stay at the Multiscale Networked Systems research group at the University of Amsterdam.
  • Research stay in the NetLab group of the University of Glasgow. A paper has been jointly published at the IEEE LCN conference.
  • It has collaborated with the University of Namur (Belgium) as a member of the project work team.
  • Visit for a year of pre-doctoral and doctoral students awarded with Fulbright scholarship and by the China Scholarship Council (CSC) from the College of Aerospace Science and Engineering National University of Defense Technology Changsha, P. R. China, respectively.

Actions to disseminate the results of the project

Organization and Presidency of the International Conference “IEEE Conference on Standards for Communications and Networking”, https://cscn2019.ieee-cscn.org/ Held on October 28-30, 2019 in Granada. Event of maximum international diffusion in which the most relevant actors in the sector participate in the field of standardization of communications and networking.

 

Socio-economic impact

  • Optimizing the deployment of Small Cells 5G, using wireless backhaul links, is key to achieving in outdoor spaces the cell density necessary to provide the capabilities promised by 5G, with its expected effect on the digitalization processes of society. This will start to be especially relevant after the 26GHz frequencies for 5G are tendered since the limited coverage on these frequencies will force an increase in the density of the base stations. This technology will also have application in vertical environments (for example, agricultural, mining, or manufacturing environments) that deploy private 5G networks, for which it is expected that there will be a dedicated spectrum at 26 GHz. As mentioned above, the studies carried out in wireless communications help decide between an ETSI Day 1 service deployment based on 802.11p DSRC radios or LTE C-V2X radios. These services will have a key impact on increasing road safety, mobility efficiency, and facilitating the adoption of autonomous cars.
  • The technology developed has made it possible to contribute to the final demonstration of the H2020 5GPICTURE project, which was carried out in the football stadium of the city of Bristol in the UK. On the other hand, the control protocols to route packets in multi-path wireless environments.
  • Several partners participate in the Great Scientific Infrastructure proposal “Scientific Large Scale Infrastructure for Computing / Communication Experimental Studies” (SLICES-RI, http://slices-ri.eu/) within the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI).
  • Accelleran (https://www.accelleran.com/), a manufacturer of Small Cells, is interested in the integration of WiFi in its products and in the wireless backhauling applied to Small Cells