The Polytechnic University of Valencia, through its Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications (iTEAM), is a partner of METIS-II, a new European project, funded by the EU H2020 program, which will be key to the future of 5G networks. The project has ushered in the next phase of research on the 5th generation of mobile and wireless communications (5G).
According to researchers from the iTEAM-UPV, among whom are professors from the Campus Gandia Undergraduate Department of Telecommunication Systems, 5G is expected to significantly improve current, mainly human-type, wireless communications, and enable a wide range of machine-type communication applications, such as, eHealth, vehicular safety, industry automation and augmented reality.
Ericsson is the project coordinator and Nokia Networks the technical coordinator. METIS-II brings together a very strong and international consortium with partners from EU, US, China, Japan, and Korea, comprising most of the major international vendors, several major operators and key research organizations. UPV is one of three European universities integrating the consortium, and the only Spanish participants.
METIS-II iTEAM news report, UPV Radio Televisió
OBJECTIVES
Among its objectives, the METIS-II project aims to develop the means to integrate novel and evolved legacy technologies into an efficient, scalable and versatile overall 5G radio access network design. In particular, the METIS-II project will also provide estimates of the future spectrum usage and recommend a 5G spectrum roadmap.
Furthermore, METIS-II will provide a description of how different air interface variants are expected to be introduced in 5G and how they will integrate with each other and with legacy technologies into one overall system considering agile and service-oriented resource management, and a comprehensive user and control plane design to the level of detail best suitable to facilitate a timely and rapid 5G standardization.
The project will be built upon the success of the first METIS project, “which marked a before and after in the definition of 5G,” and which also involved the iTEAM-UPV Institute. “METIS-II will enable rapid progress in 5G standardization by serving as a pre-standards research forum, where consensus on key issues to do with radio aspects of next-generation networks can be reached,” said José F. Monserrat, iTEAM researcher and Campus Gandia professor.
PARTNERS
Likewise, the project will foster cooperation, coordination and alignment between the 5G-PPP projects within the European H2020 research program, by organizing joint workshops and initiating discussions and consensus building on central aspects such as scenarios and requirements, spectrum, performance evaluation and radio access network design.
The METIS-II project is a project with 23 partners co-funded in the European H2020 research program with a budget of 8 M€. In addition to Ericsson, Nokia Networks and the Polytechnic University of Valencia, further partners include: Alcatel Lucent, Deutsche Telekom, Huawei, iDate, Intel, ITRI, Janmedia Interactive, KTH, NTT DOCOMO, NYU, Orange, Samsung, Telecom Italia, Telefónica, University of Kaiserslautern and WINLAB.
