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5G-DRIVE
5G HarmoniseD Research and TrIals for serVice Evolution between EU and China – is a Research and Innovation Action, running from 2018 to 2021, funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme.
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5G-DRIVE will trial and validate the interoperability between EU & China 5G networks operating at 3.5 GHz bands for enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and 3.5 & 5.9 GHz bands for V2X scenarios. 5G-DRIVE involves 17 European partners from 11 countries and different sectors.
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Word from the Coordinator
The first seven months of the project are now over and 5G-DRIVE is on track and running well. This is quite an achievement given the particular challenges the project has been facing in ramping up its activities. Besides the usual challenges of a Horizon 2020 project, there have been others related to the twinning of 5G-DRIVE with its Chinese counter project (5G Large-Scale Trial), with whom we plan to jointly perform 5G trialling and some research to further evolve 5G technology.
The Chinese twin project has already started preparing trial sites well in advance of their project start, which means 5G-DRIVE has to align their activities in that aspect. Furthermore, addressing identified challenges has in my view led to the realisation on both sides that this special cooperation should be handled with a high degree of flexibility and openness to unforeseen changes. Nonetheless, the 5G-DRIVE project is fully on schedule according to our plan in the Grant Agreement.
Apart from the aforementioned challenges, the planned work of 5G-DRIVE and the cooperation with the twin project has been progressing well. The first deliverables have been completed, and the relationships and basis for collaboration with the twin project have been successfully established so that the actual technical activities on work package level could be started. A joint agreement has been reached between the technical tasks on what specific input is required from either side at what stage and month. Furthermore, first options regarding concrete trial plans have been discussed. It shows that both projects are open and constructive in order to jointly achieve maximum benefits from the collaboration. Stay tuned for more news, and enjoy reading our newsletter.
Uwe Herzog
5G-DRIVE Coordinator, Eurescom
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5G-DRIVE project updates
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5G-DRIVE kicked off in September 2018 and is in full throttle
The EU funded 5G-DRIVE project kicked off in September 2018, in what will be 30 months of intense activities. The 17 partners from 11 EU countries met in Heidelberg, Germany, from September 6-7, 2018 and were hosted by Eurescom, the project coordinator. During the kick-off meeting, partners went through the various WP and planned activities, having defined concrete steps for the implementation of the project. The partners also discussed the objectives and plans for cooperation with the China twinning project (5G Large-Scale Trial) which is led by China Mobile.
Since then, the partners met again from January 15-17, 2019 in Guildford, United Kingdom. The second plenary project meeting was hosted by partner University of Surrey, and focused on discussing the progress made in the first four months of the project. The meeting addressed the outcomes of the kick-off meeting between the EU and Chinese projects held in November 2019 (see dedicated news piece), and specific next steps for both projects. Concrete plans for the eMBB and V2X trials that will take place at the project’s three trial sites (Surrey, Espoo and JRC Ispra) were discussed.
The latest plenary meeting took place on April 8-10 2019 in Brussels, Belgium. ERTICO hosted the meeting, which served to discuss concrete steps for the eMBB and V2X trials. On the second day of the meeting, 5G-DRIVE held its first External Advisory Board meeting, which allowed the project to collect valuable insights and recommendations for the project activities. 5G-DRIVE will now have its first technical review meeting in the beginning of May 2019.
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5G-DRIVE cooperating with the Chinese “5G Large-scale Trial” project
Signing ceremony in Beijing – from left: Ms. Sun Ji, Deputy Consultant at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT); Ms. Yuhong Huang, Deputy General Manager at China Mobile Research Institute; Mr. Uwe Herzog, Programme Manager at Eurescom; Mr. Philipp Barth, Head of CONNECT Section at the Delegation of the European Union to China
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After the official 5G-DRIVE kick-off in September 2018, the project consortium travelled to China from November 19-23, 2019 to officialise the cooperation with the Chinese “5G Large-scale Trial” project and to visit three of China Mobile’s trial sites where 5G-related innovation and technologies are being demonstrated and tested.
The cooperation agreement was signed in Beijing on November 19, 2019 by Mr. Uwe Herzog from 5G-DRIVE and Ms. Yuhong Huang, Deputy General Manager of the China Mobile Research Institute (CMRI), for the “5G Large-scale Trial” project. The signing ceremony was attended by and received high-level policy support from Ms. Sun Ji from the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and Mr. Philipp Barth from the Delegation of the European Union to China.
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The rest of the visit involved discussions on eMBB and V2X, including how the two projects can collaborate on joint trials. The 5G-DRIVE partners travelled to Hangzhou where China Mobile showcased the link performance of a 5G base station operating 3.5GHz in a real-life deployment scenario. It also included the “Hangzhou 5G City 1Gbps Experience Trial” tour, which demonstrated the potential of 5G to stream 4K videos on an experiment van. The partners also travelled to Suzhou and Wuxi, which included a visit to the Suzhou 5G Experience Centre, where China Mobile with Ericsson demonstrated the link performance of a 5G base station in the outdoor and indoor environment, and the LTE-V2X trial site built together by China Mobile and Wuxi.
Read more about the 5G-DRIVE visit to China in our project news and the official press release.
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First External Advisory Board Meeting in Brussels
The first meeting of 5G-DRIVE’s External Advisory Board (EAB) took place in Brussels on 9 April 2019 and was co-located with a plenary project meeting.
Five of the project’s EAB members participated in the meeting, which had the opportunity to learn about the technical vision and progress of 5G-DRIVE, the project’s architecture and use cases as well as the cooperation plan with the Chinese twin project related to the eMBB trial plan and the V2X trial plan. Further topics included the 5G technology and service innovations relevant for 5G-DRIVE as well as the project’s impact creation activities.
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5G-DRIVE is organising the workshop on 5G-Trials – From Experiments to Business Validation
5G-DRIVE will be organising a workshop titled 5G-Trials – From Experiments to Business Validation as part of the IEEE International Conference on Communications, which will take place in Shanghai, China on May 20-24, 2019.
The workshop aims at providing an overview of the status and progress of 5G trials, and will discuss the first results and the new insights and findings from the range of ongoing trials. The workshop will cover key topics related to the evaluation of 5G spectrum, evaluation of the performance of 5G NR implementations, verification and performance test of 5G key enabling technologies, 5G network planning, among others.
The workshop will be a full-day event and will take place on May 20, 2019. Keep tuned to the project website and our Twitter account for up-to-date information about the workshop. We hope to see you in Shanghai!
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5G-DRIVE scenarios and trial activities
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eMBB development and planning
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5G-DRIVE will build pre-commercial end-to-end (E2E) testbeds with sufficient coverage to evaluate the performance of eMBB on the 3.5 GHz spectrum band. The building of these testbeds is to allow the testing of 5G NR (New Radio) with a focus on eMBB using close-to-commercial equipment in realistic settings that can reproduce near real-life network performance. The eMBB trials to be deployed will cover three scenarios: indoor hotspots, focusing on high user density and high capacity/ throughput in indoor small coverage areas; dense urban areas, focusing on high user density and high traffic loads in city centres with outdoor coverage scenario, and indoor hotspots, focusing on continuous coverage in urban areas and macro cells. The eMBB trial activities will be carried out at three sites: JRC (Ispra, Italy) will focus on the performance characterisation of commercial 5G NR base stations delivering eMBB services in the 3.5 GHz band; the VTT 5G testbed (Espoo, Finland) will facilitate the testing of SDN/MEC, indoor positioning, latency reduction, reliability, among others; the 5G Innovation Centre (Surrey, UK) will focus on the evaluation of eMBB, including 5G service with controlled latency to support AR services across two regions. Read more.
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V2X development and planning
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5G-DRIVE will demonstrate 5G technologies at pre-commercial testbeds with V2X services and then demonstrate Internet-of-Vehicle (IoV) services using Vehicle-to-Network (V2N) and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications. The demonstrations will be carried out with the objective of testing 5G network capabilities to deliver ultra-reliable lower-latency communication (URLLC) for self-driving scenarios. They will also validate 5G KPIs in terms of bandwidth, latency and communication coverage in different scenarios and pilot sites as well as to evaluate V2V and V2N communications resilience against cyber/RF attacks and interference under real-life conditions. To evaluate the potential benefits of 5G on V2X scenarios, the trials scenarios will be carried out at two pilot sites: Espoo (Finland) and JRC (Ispra, Italy), with each trial site having complementary objectives. The V2X demonstrations will combine two main types of testing: at the Espoo site, vehicles will drive in a real environment; at JRC Ispra, testing will be done in a controlled environment, based on harmonised standards. This combination intends to provide the required diversity of testing for evaluating the suitability and benefit of 5G for V2X scenarios. Read more.
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eMBB trials: Cloud based AR test cross two regions
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Visitors of the University of Surrey’s 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) booth are able to see themselves being converted into full 3D holograms in real-time. This is one of the use cases being explored in the 5G-DRIVE project. By wearing augmented reality (AR) glasses, visitors are able to see and touch the holograms from all angles that mix into the real world, which takes immersiveness to a new level. These demonstrations are possible due to the power of 5GIC’s testbed, the largest capacity 5G test network for research, innovation and development in the world. Surrey’s test facility can now support more than one million users and is open to vertical companies who want to test their applications in the 5G environment.
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V2X trials: Programming the V2X interface for the “Marilyn” pilot car
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The V2X trial preparation is underway, with VTT already programming the interface for the GLOSA intersection trials. The test sessions will start in the Finnish trial site in Espoo on May 15, 2019 to reach the first milestones. The objective of the trial is to connect traffic lights to develop automated collision avoidance. The network trials start with ITS G5 units to have a benchmark level and a series of PC5 based C-V2X will follow. Simultaneously, Vediafi is developing RTK accurate positioning and is discussing with several manufactures about PC5 chipsets and C-V2X modules availability, which will be integrated in the 5G-DRIVE tests later on in the project.
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Get to know the 5G-DRIVE trial sites
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Surrey, UK
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The 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) Surrey trial site provides state-of-the-art 5G test and demonstration platforms, which includes a Cloud-RAN (C-RAN) test platform to support clusters of remote radio heads (RRH). The test network also provides a unique environment to test operation of heterogeneous access networks in a real-life environment. The Surrey testbed is connected to the Vodafone Core Network, and covers a 4 km² area for the testing of 5G technologies, and encompasses a stretch of motorway and dense urban radio environments. Learn more.
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Espoo (Finland)
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The Espoo trial site provides 5G testing facilities built in several national projects under the 5G Test Network of Finland framework. The current network infrastructure is built on top of Nokia’s NetLeap LTE test network. The current infrastructure supports research areas ranging from the programmable core network infrastructures, including the utilization of the software defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV) concepts, to dense and heterogeneous access network configurations with various short-range technologies, small cells, and Internet of Things (IoT) use cases. Learn more.
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JRC Ispra (Italy)
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The JRC Ispra trial site is a fully fenced, 167-hectare research campus for hands-on experimentation, testing and demonstration purposes. It features 36 km of roads under real-life driving conditions, nine Vehicle Emissions Laboratories (VELA 1-9) for calibration and electromagnetic compatibility/interference testing, and several anechoic chambers of various sizes for conducting radio frequency (RF) measurements in a clean channel environment. Learn more.
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Catch up on some of the latest 5G-DRIVE publications, including project deliverables, scientific publications, and other in-depth articles.
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Project deliverable D3.1: eMBB development and test plan
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The focus of this document is to provide a tentative test plan for evaluation of the performance of enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), in particular for the spectrum band at 3.5 GHz. The general trial setup requirements are given to harmonize between various trial sites. The detailed trial sites descriptions follow to explain the capability of each site to conduct different tests. The methodology and selected key performance indicators (KPIs) are also given, together with specific test plans of the eMBB trials in WP3.
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Read the deliverable here.
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Project deliverable D4.1: V2X development and test plan
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The deliverable provides a test plan for the 5G-DRIVE V2X trials at the Espoo and JRC Ispra trials sites. The deliverable provides details about the pilot site infrastructure, the use cases, the intended test scenarios and methodology for evaluation.
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Read the deliverable here.
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Project deliverable D6.1: 5G-DRIVE Dissemination and Communication Plan
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This document describes the 5G-DRIVE dissemination and communication (D&C) strategy and plan. This includes identifying the specific objectives within the project; the main target groups and the benefits they can reap from the project; including the main information and messages that can be shared to the target groups; the main tools and channels that will be used to convey information and results about the project; how the impact of these measures will be evaluated; and when the specific planned activities will take place.
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Read the deliverable here.
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Article: 5G-DRIVE: 5G harmonised research and trials for service evolution between EU and China
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This publication presents a thorough overview of the 5G-DRIVE project, including the objectives, project concept, trial sites, and expected impact.
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Read the deliverable here.
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5G-DRIVE event participation
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5G-DRIVE at the 20th Infocom World Conference 2018 in Greece
5G-DRIVE was represented at the 20th Infocom World 2018 Conference (Athens, Greece, 21 November 21, 2018). OTE and SmartNet S.A. organised a session titled Cooperation between EU and China in the context of the 5G-DRIVE Research Project for enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) and “Vehicle-to-Everything” (V2X) applications – Scenarios, Use Cases and Essential Technological Background for Trials”). Read more.
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5G-DRIVE at the 6th Global 5G Event in Brazil
5G-DRIVE was represented at the 6th Global 5G Event (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 28-29 November 2018). Uwe Herzog (Eurescom), 5G-DRIVE Project Coordinator, gave a presentation in which he introduced the project to the audience, including details on the objectives, trial sites and details about collaboration with the Chinese twin project. Read more.
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5G-DRIVE at ICT 2018
5G-DRIVE participated in ICT 2018 (Vienna, Austria, 4-6 December, 2018). Martel and Eurescom represented the project and discussed it with participants (including from the EC, the 5G PPP and 5G IA board) that stopped by the 5G PPP programme “5G in Action” and IoT Large-Scale Pilot Programme booths. Read more.
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5G-DRIVE participated in the 5G Verticals Workshop
5G-DRIVE partner OTE participated in the 5G Verticals Workshop (Brussels, Belgium, 12-13 February, 2019). OTE presented the status of 5G-DRIVE’s use cases and related pilots, and discussed the progress and overall plan with respect to standardisation activities. Read more.
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Visit us at upcoming events
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IEEE – International Conference on Communications 2019 (IEEE – ICC 2019)
The IEEE-ICC 2019 (20-24 May, 2019; Shanghai, China) is one of the IEEE’s major conferences dedicated to fostering innovation in all aspects of communication, attracting almost 3,000 participants to each yearly conference. This year’s edition will be a five-day event with keynote speeches from the industry, academia and government sectors; panels and forums; technical sessions with paper presentations; workshops focusing on the latest technological trends; exhibits; and others. One of the event’s workshops will be organised by the 5G-DRIVE project (on May 20, 2019), and will focus on “5G-Trials – From Experiments to Business Validation”. Read more.
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2nd International Workshop on 5G and Cooperative Autonomous Driving
The 2nd International Workshop on 5G and Cooperative Autonomous Driving (20-24 May, 2019; Shanghai, China) focuses on favoring a multidisciplinary, cross-layer perspective to 5G and autonomous cooperative driving, bringing together researchers, developers, and practitioners from academia and industry. The workshop will be held as part of the IEEE International Conference on Communications – ICC 2019. Read more.
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Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations 2019 (AIAI-2019) International Conference
AIAI-2019 (24-26 May, 2019; Crete, Greece) aims to provide attendees with the opportunity to gain insights into eBusiness, eCommerce, eHealth, eLearning, Engineering and Industry, Environmental Modelling, Finance, Telecommunications – Transportation, Crisis and Risk Management, Project Management, Emerging Applications, and much more. Read more.
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European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC) 2019
EuCNC 2019 (18-21 June, 2019; Valencia, Spain) is the 28th edition of a successful series of technical and scientific conferences open to the world research community. EuCNC focuses on communication networks and systems, and reaching services and applications. The conference aims at showcasing the results of the consecutive programmes on R&D and projects co-financed by European programmes, and presenting the latest developments in this area. Read more.
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IEEE Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft 2019)
NetSoft 2019 (24-28 June, 2019; Paris, France) will address the most advanced developments in the areas of Artificial Intelligence and companion algorithms, self-driving and autonomic networking, policy-based network management, dynamic network slice provisioning, among other promising research areas for the sake of robust, reliable, softwarised networks. Read more.
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The 5G-DRIVE project receives funding from the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme – grant agreement no. 814956. The European Commission has no responsibility for the contents of this press release.
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