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

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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

  • Outsourcing of the 5GCity experimentation platform integrating new sites to carry out experiments with new vertical infrastructure. In particular, the complete platform has been deployed in 5TONIC (Open Research and Innovation Laboratory), integrating sites of companies and national and international research centers such as Brazil.
  • Different tests and demonstrations of the project have been carried out to Telefónica I + D and Ericsson, and together with both companies the Master of NFV and SDN for 5G networks is being developed in which several 5GCity researchers participate and in which they have been dissemination to different project results.
  • Work has been done on the deployment of a network infrastructure that evolves from that originally available in EHU-OEF (EHU OpenFlow Enabled Facility) towards an infrastructure called SN4I, which has been integrated with the platform of this project.

 

Companies with which it has collaborated within the framework of the project:

- Berten (Cantabrian SME), TID, Ericsson, Real Time Innovations (Inc.),

- INTA, and with this organization and with Telefónica (both EPOs of 5GCity) have also participated in the H2020 Labyrinth proposal, which has received funding and is currently under execution.

- Signing of the Joint Research Unit (JRU) collaboration agreement between UGR and Telefónica I + D to transfer the results of the project and to carry out joint research in the field of 5G networks.

- UGR together with UPC has designed, deployed and evaluated the impact of a federation of OpenSwitch controllers with DDS middleware.

 

Relationship with other projects related to the scope of this project

As a result of the project results, the members participate in two networks of excellence: RED2018-102383-T “Advanced methodologies for performance and QoX evaluation on telematics networks and services” https://i3a.unizar.es/es/proyectos/red-everest and in the network "Engineering future secure edge computing networks, systems and services" Reference: RED2018-102585-T http://go2edge.uva.es/

 

The results of the project have endorsed and obtained funding for the endowment of:

  • Two infrastructure projects and scientific-technical equipment of the Ministry of Science and Innovation in 5G and IoT for the UGR: Project EQC2018-004988-P “IoT5GLab: Design and implementation of future networks for 5G and IoT” 2019 - 2020 and the Project EQC2019-005605-P “MAstering 5G: deep learning and smart Infrastructure Communications for a secure connected society (MAGIC-5G)” 2020-2021.
  • An infrastructure project and scientific-technical equipment of the Ministry of Science and Innovation in 5G SDN / NFV for the UPC: Project EQC2019-005401-P, “Drone research laboratory for the integration of mobile communications (DRONELab)”, 2019 - 2021.
  • From a remote monitoring system resulting from a public tender awarded to the companies Airport and Navigation solutions. In this project, the UPC designs the network and network services with telemetry, audio, and video transport with SDN architectures
  • Outsourcing of the 5GCity experimentation platform integrating new sites to carry out experiments with new vertical infrastructure. In particular, the complete platform has been deployed in 5TONIC (Open Research and Innovation Laboratory), integrating sites of companies and national and international research centers such as Brazil.
  • Different tests and demonstrations of the project have been carried out to Telefónica I+D and Ericsson, and together with both companies, the Master of NFV and SDN for 5G networks is being developed in which several 5GCity researchers participate and in which they have been disseminating to different project results.
  • Work has been done on the deployment of a network infrastructure that evolves from that originally available in EHU-OEF (EHU OpenFlow Enabled Facility) towards an infrastructure called SN4I, which has been integrated with the platform of this project.

 

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

- The results of the project have also been ported to the different professional masters in which 5GCity researchers teach (Master in Systems Integration and Aircraft, Master in IoT Networks, Master in Connected Industry 4.0, Master in Bigdata, Master in Applications and Telecommunication Engineering Management).

 

Actions to disseminate the results of the project

 

Socio-economic impact

The results of the socio-economic impact can be summarized as:

  • The development of the SDN control plane for TSN networks and its publication as open software can have a notable impact on industries such as audiovisual or industry 4.0, as seen in the interest created by the proposal at the BIT Audiovisual I + D congress , where she was selected as the winner of the call. The public exhibition of the proposal in the project also meant an act of dissemination in an environment (audiovisual industry) in which the concepts of networks are not necessarily known, and it even drew the attention of the RTVE Technical Department, although it was not finally reached to establish any joint action.
  • Strategic Research on the application of 5G to the Basque Country's Smart Specialization Strategy (RIS3).
  • 5G pilot project, financed by Red.es, 5G-Euskadi in the case of Industry 4.0.
  • Installation in an industrial plant of the automobile sector of a 5G infrastructure (Bizkaia). The results are being demonstrated in the Center for Advanced Aeronautical Manufacturing (CFAA) of the UPV / EHU through the SN4I infrastructure.
  • Participation in 5G Barcelona.
  • The development of the SDN control plane for Time-Sensitive Networking networks may have an impact in Industry 4.0 scenarios. - Participation in the XAFIR Industry 4.0 consortium: Xarxa Fourth Industrial Revolution.
  • A Joint Research Unit (JRU) collaboration agreement has been signed between UGR and Telefónica I + D to transfer the results of the project and to carry out joint research in the field of 5G networks.
  • i2CAT has participated in the creation of a spin-off Neutroon S.L. (https://www.neutroon.com/) which is dedicated to the 5G private network service. Part of the developments of the control plane for Small Cells WiFi has been licensed to Neutroon S.L.
  • Part of the results and frameworks used in the project has been applied in the development of an application for remote control and distributed in heliports in Catalonia.

 

Transfer of knowledge

The following activities are already being transferred.

  • The dynamic sensor reconfiguration system.
  • The sensor virtualization mechanism.
  • The application of 5G technologies (both NFV / SDN technologies and NR applications).

In addition, the project has generated three branches of knowledge that can be valued and transferred:

  • Algorithms that allow the design and management of high-capacity, low-latency, synchronous optical access networks (PON) and managed by SDN / NFV / Slicing applied to 5G / 6G backhaul and fronthaul
  • Design algorithms for optimal placement of network elements and 5G / 6G services
  • A framework to create digital market places of on-demand services for 5G environments.

 

All of them can be applied to critical environments, emergencies, and various cross-cutting sectors such as industry 4.0 or health, among others.