5G-EVE (5G European Validation platform for Extensive trials) is the European 5G trial validation platform launched in July 2018 with the aim of implementing and testing advanced 5G infrastructures in Europe, developing and interconnecting four European sites located in Greece, Spain, France and Italy, to collaboratively create an open end-to-end 5G facility.
The main objective of this meeting in Madrid has been to plan and coordinate the deployments of 5G technology in the four laboratories in Spain, Italy, France and Greece, so that, from May 1, 2019, use cases from six industrial sectors (Industry 4.0, Tourism, Transport, Smart Cities, Utilities and Media) can begin their validation tests against the 5G KPIs they require.
The 5G-EVE platform in Spain is being developed within the framework of 5TONIC (www.5tonic.org), the open research and innovation laboratory for 5G technologies founded by Telefónica and IMDEA Networks Institute, of which Ericsson has been a member since 2015.
Luisa Muñoz, director of Ericsson's R&D Center in Madrid, commented: “Ericsson's alliance with Telefónica, UC3M and IMDEA Networks for 5TONIC, with the boost from the European 5G-EVE project, will help consolidate Madrid as the leading 5G laboratory for Europe and, with it, increase the number of vertical collaborators in the 5G innovation ecosystem.”.
As part of the session, 5G-EVE participants visited the 5TONIC laboratory at IMDEA Networks, where Ericsson has deployed its new infrastructure portfolio for radio, core, transport, and fronthaul. There, the company showcased some of its latest technological applications, including Private LTE Network, Massive MIMO, IoT, Latency Reduction, and Virtualized Core, as enablers of 5G technology. These applications are available to various industry sectors so they can test specific use cases of 5G technology in different sectors of Industry 4.0—such as automotive and intelligent transportation, entertainment and media, smart tourism, and critical remote device control, among others.
During the visit, the technological solutions that enable these use cases were showcased. These solutions, which constitute some of the basic components of 5G, have been deployed by Ericsson in collaboration with CommScope and Intel:
- Massive MIMO: Single-user MIMO and Multi-user MIMO are implementations of Massive MIMO designed to increase user data speeds and the system's capacity to meet 5G standards. Both leverage Massive MIMO by dynamically transmitting data as highly focused beams and exploiting multipath propagation and spatial multiplexing to simultaneously send and receive more than one data signal over the same radio channel.
Multi-antenna transmission already plays a significant role in current generations of mobile communications and will become even more critical with the arrival of 5G. These types of solutions have applications in drone communication and in spaces with a high density of devices.
- IoT and Latency Reduction: Low latency is one of the 5G characteristics that will enable the expansion of IoT, Industry 4.0, and the use of Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs). The goal is to store the data generated by AGVs on a cloud server where users can access production and machinery maintenance information, predict failures before they occur to avoid downtime, and improve real-time control. All of this will have practical applications in self-guided vehicles/robots for factories with diverse functions, such as internal transport.
- Virtualization and Orchestration, focusing on two important aspects for 5G-EVE: the orchestration of a multi-site experimentation environment and the possibilities offered by 5G and edge computing to offload some of the device's intelligence to the network. The proof of concept is based on a real-world use case, in which an end-user device performs video analysis using Artificial Intelligence. The demo proves that video processing can be offloaded to the network thanks to the low latency and high throughput offered by a 5G network environment.
The 5G-EVE consortium is laying the foundation for end-to-end 5G networks in Europe. The project's results are expected to accelerate the development of the 5G innovation ecosystem with a comprehensive set of capabilities and position European industry in the global 5G market.
