DRAGON

Website: https://www.h2020-dragon.eu/                 Contact:  DRAGON-Contact@5g-ppp.eu

Abstract:

Nowadays there is a shared vision among industry, operators and academy that 5G wireless networks will have to provide wideband wireless access and ubiquitous computing anywhere and at any time. The human life of the majority of the EU citizens will be surrounded by intelligent wireless sensors, which will bring radical changes to the way we live and do things. Supporting this scenario is a challenge for network operators and wireless network infrastructures and it will demand a tremendous performance improvement of medium range wireless infrastructure. This challenge needs to be addressed by a convergence of advanced semiconductor nanotechnology and a robust wireless infrastructure based on meshed networks with seamless fiber performances.

The DRAGON project, through the exploitation of the radio spectrum in D-band (130-174.8 GHz)[1] with beam steering functionality, will enable wireless links with data rate exceeding current V-band and E-band wireless backhaul solutions by at least a factor of 10 and thus, it will bring wireless systems to the speed of optical systems. The DRAGON project vision and objectives rely on a power efficient and silicon based BiCMOS transceiver analog front end, operating in D-band and enabling cost efficient deployment of telecommunications networks with seamless fiber performance. A beam steering integrated antenna array using an intelligent low-cost packaging technology will be developed for the implementation of the 5G network demo trial on field with fine beam alignment for compensating pole vibration.

The DRAGON consortium has a well-balanced and complementary know-how in the relevant areas for designing and demonstrating the feasibility of a small cell cellular network architecture based on meshed D-band backhaul links. DRAGON will therefore secure Europe’s industrial leadership and pave the way towards the beyond 5G telecommunications networks.

Keywords:  Millimeter waves; Radio frequency Transceiver; D-band; Radio beam steering; Antenna array; Backhauling

[1] Frequency interval as defined in current Work Item activities of the ETSI mWT ISG and the CEPT/ECC SE19 group

Project Participants: