A group of 16 telecom industry stakeholders, including European operators, vendors and research centers, have teamed up for a research project to create a 5G air interface.
Orange, Telecom Italia, vendors Huawei, Alcatel-Lucent, Intel, Nokia, Samsung, Sequans Communications and Wings ICT Solutions, as well as multiple universities and research institutes, have formed the FANTASTIC-5G research project. It will be led by Alcatel-Lucent's Bell Labs.
The two-year project will aim to create a flexible air interface at below 6-GHz frequencies to support the diverse requirements of 5G networks.
The multi-service air interface will need to be highly flexible, scalable, versatile, energy and resource efficient, as well as future-proofed by enabling upgrades via software releases.
FANTASTIC-5G has secured €8 million ($8.8 million) worth of funding from the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 initiative.
“FANTASTIC-5G is of key importance, as the multi-service air interface concepts being developed in the project will be evaluated and validated by the partners,” said Bell Labs' Frank Schaich. “This helps to build up consensus and to facilitate the standardization process of 5G.”
The universities involved in the project are Aalborg University, Politecnico di Bari, Institut Mines-Telecom/Telecom Bretagne, University of Bremen.