EU-China Cooperation on 5G and beyond – Digital Around the World

EU-China Cooperation on 5G and beyond – Digital Around the World

5G-DRIVE participated in an exciting, global ‘Digital Around the World’ event on 21 October with a session on status of EU-China cooperation on 5G and beyond.

Ms. Kai Zhang, Project Manager at Martel and the EU-China relationship manager for the 5G-DRIVE project, has orchestrated the set-up of the session together with Mr. Latif Ladid from University of Luxembourg, who is also the President of IPv6 Forum.

The purpose of the session is to share experiences and discuss lessons learned through the European Commission funded 5G-DRIVE project and its twin, Chinese 5G Product Large-Scale Trial project funded by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The session features speakers from Europe and China, representing the two twin projects. Achievement as well as best practices are the key messages sent through the session.

Ms. Kai Zhang has initiated with welcome remarks and introduction to the purpose and agenda of the session. She then gave the floor to the speakers.

Keynote opening: EU strategy on 5G and with China

Mr. Jean- Pierre Biename, Chairman of the Institute of Economic / Social Research on Telecommunications (IREST) and former Secretary General of the 5G Infrastructure Association (5G IA), presented a comprehensive roadmap on European’s 5G strategy up to now, as well as the plan in the future. Between 2020 and 2025, 5G services in Europe aimed to be commercialised and rolled-out to wide coverage of geographic areas and sectors. A number of initiatives, such as the 5G PPP, different trialling activities as well as project initiatives have been referred to.

Introduction to Project 5G-DRIVE: 5G Harmonised Research and Trials for service Evolution between EU and China:

Mr. Uwe Herzog, Programme Manager at Eurescom and Coordinator of the 5G-DRIVE project, jointly presented the overview of the 5G-DRIVE project with Dr. Tao Chen, Senior Research at VTT and the Technical Coordinator of the 5G-DRIVE project. In particular, the latest stage results from the European side on the different trials were presented, for both Enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) domains.  In particular, progress and results of joint trials with China have been presented, for eMBB, non-standalone(NSA) trials and standalone (SA) trials.

Introduction to the 5G Product Large-Scale Trial project

Mr. Jianhua Liu and Ms. Yinxiang Zheng from China Mobile, jointly presented the current development of 5G in China via the China Mobile led twin project. Jianhua, the lead of eMBB activities, presented the novel test methods for 5G network performance field trial in China, as well as the progress of 3D beamforming in 5G Massive MIMO systems. In addition, he presented the large 5G NSA commercial deployment across over fifty thousand 5G base stations in China, in over 50 cities, as well as the SA commercial deployment conducted in over 350 thousand 5G base stations in more than 300 cities in the country. Yinxiang, the V2X activities lead presented that China has completed the construction of V2X test environment in Shanghai (both enclosed test zone and open roads). Testing wise, the Chinese team has conducted function test, performance test and over twenty different application tests.

Outlook: cooperation between EU and China in 5G and beyond

Dr. Chih-Lin I, Chief Scientist in Wireless Communication at China Mobile, wrapped up the session with a conversation with Mr. Latif Ladid. The opportunities forward are immense and both sides hold an open attitude on undertaking joint activities in the field of Information Communication Technologies (ICT). The key results of cooperation between 5G-DRIVE and its twin project 5G Product Large-Scale Trial led by China Mobile will pave way for next rounds of potential joint calls and opportunities.

 

Click here to access the presentations of the session: DigitalAroundtheWorldEU-ChinaSession

 

The Digital Around the World event, organized by IoT Forum, featured more than 24 hours of high level sessions with keynote speakers from various countries sequentially by time zone in Europe, the Americas and the Asia/Pacific region. A worldwide community of industry experts, researchers and specialized media had the opportunity to follow and interact in the debates.

Recording from Digital Around the World is available here.