European Commission touts plethora of EU-funded 5G R&D projects

The European Commission, keeping up the public-relations push to support its continuing passion for 5G, issued a public memo in which it said next-generation networks "will be a leap, not a step, forward."

"It will also offer totally new possibilities to connect people, and also things--being cars, houses, energy infrastructures. All of them at once, wherever you and they are," said Neelie Kroes, EC vice president, according to the missive.

The EC memo cited the roadmap of the 5G Public-Private Partnership (5G PPP), which echoes other 5G initiatives in pursuing next-generation technology that will enable wireless networks to offer 1,000 times the capacity that was available in 2010, energy savings up to 90 percent per service, rapid service creation time as fast as 90 minutes and connections that will serve more than 7 trillion wireless devices and in excess of 7 billion people.


5G PPP video

The EC also provided a rundown of some of the varied 5G projects that are being funded by the European Union. Those include the METIS 2020 project, which the EC noted is being coordinated by Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) "to prepare the architecture of the future 5G networks" and "help with pre-standardization and regulation processes."

The EC also cited CROWD, which it said is led by an Italian company and is focused on very dense wireless access networks, as well as 5GNOW, a project focused on waveforms that is led by Germany's Fraunhofer Society.

Some other EU-funded 5G research initiatives include iJOIN, which is targeting joint design and optimization of access and backhaul; TROPIC, which is focused on distributed computing, storage and radio resource allocation over cooperative femtocells; MOTO, which aims to develop innovative terminal-to-terminal offloading technologies; and Mobile Cloud Networking, which will "define and evaluate Europe's vision of mobile cloud computing."

Of course, 5G is of global interest, with companies and governments worldwide already engaging in early R&D. 4G Americas' member companies recently put together a 43-page white paper that attempts to provide a one-time overview of global 5G initiatives as of the first quarter of 2014.

Looking at 5G activity in the Americas, the trade group noted that much of the R&D has been occurring at various universities. "These research activities are often joint activities with private industry, funded through government grants, or a combination of the two," it said.  

For more:
- see this EU memo
- see this 4G Americas document (PDF)

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