5G ESSENCE

Link to project website: www.5g-essence-h2020.eu

Contact: 5G-ESSENCE-Contact@5g-ppp.eu

Objectives

The 5G ESSENCE project is an innovative effort, towards achieving the following objectives:

• Specification of the critical architectural enhancements (originating from prior 5G-PPP Phase-1 projects or approaches) that are needed to fully enable cloud-integrated multi-tenant small cell networking.
• Definition of the baseline system architecture and of the related interfaces for the provisioning of a cloud-integrated multi-tenant Small Cell network and a programmable Radio Resource Management controller, both customisable, on a per vertical basis.
• Development of the centralised SD-RAN controller, able to program the radio resources usage in a unified way for all involved CESCs.
• Exploitation of high-performance and efficient virtualisation techniques for better resource utilisation, higher throughput and less delay at Network Services (NSs) creation time.
• Development and inclusion of suitable orchestrator enhancements, for the corresponding distributed service management.
• Demonstration and evaluation of the cloud-integrated multi-tenant small cell network, via three real-life vertical industries each one proposing a meaningful use case with strong market relevance.
• Conduct of a market analysis and establishment of new business models, following to the technical progress of each use case; in this framework, detailed techno-economic analysis and roadmapping towards exploitation and commercialisation by industrial partners is also a high priority.
• Ensuring maximisation of 5G ESSENCE impact to the realisation of the 5G vision by establishing close liaison and interactive synergies with other 5G-PPP Phase-1 & 2 projects and the Association.

Achievements

The actual achievements of the project are shortly listed as follows:

• The project has defined, assessed and further elaborated the necessary use cases, targeted by the 5G vertical industries’ demonstrations during the ongoing trials. More specifically, for all originally selected use cases there have been exact demonstration plans and descriptions of functional/non-functional requirements of the respective network services, by elaborating and refining the initial planning -as developed in the architectural framework- so that to effectively integrate the corresponding services. Effort has also been performed upon defining suitable proof-of-concept (PoC) for the exploitation of the participating 5G ESSENCE technologies, in all corresponding scenarios.
• Furthermore, a proper test strategy has been proposed and realised for “adjusting” depth and coverage of testing to available resources. More specifically, we have defined a set of functional tests and KPIs in order to evaluate the relevance of the proposed scenarios and architecture from one hand, and the coherence of the integration and testing process on the other. Detailed demonstrations have been performed and are ongoing towards further validating the context of each specific use case.
• In addition, the 5G ESSENCE has established a detailed system architecture and corresponding interfaces for the provisioning of a cloud-integrated multi-tenant SC network and a programmable RRM controller, conformant to the well-defined project objectives. The original architecture has thus been re-assessed, updated and further extended, via the inclusion of more attributes and features (such as telemetry, data analytics and improved orchestration).
• The project has also described and analysed the current status of the development of methods for highly dynamic virtualisation solutions and for their applicability within the project’s framework.
• Another set of achievements has been about the successful description and the overall design of the centralised SD-RAN Controller, together with different network interfaces used in the solution as well as with methods and mechanisms for network slicing, optimisation and implementation of a novel radio resource management framework.
• By late of 2019, the 5G ESSENCE also aims to “map” the key exploitable innovations to the standardisation objectives.
• Moreover, the well-planned dissemination and communication strategy continues to be valid, ensuring that the project achieves maximum visibility and that it has an impact within the business and scientific community, thus effectively accelerating the adoption of the various 5G ESSENCE research and innovation outputs.

Detailed information on objectives and achievements!

Project Participants: