CW Leads the Development of UK5G
This article is from the CW Journal archive.
The BT Tower, opened in 1965, was a striking symbol of the UK being in the forefont of telecoms. The British Government wants 5G in the UK to have a similar impact. At a packed event, held at the BT Tower, UK5G was launched. CW, along with partners the Knowledge Transfer Network and TM Forum, has won a government grant to create and develop the UK's 5G Innovation Network, an initiative called UK5G.
More accurately it's the memberships of the three organisations which hold the key to establishing a vibrant 5G eco-system. To some, 5G is a brave concept, but to many members of CW and the other organisations, it's just another revolutionary new technology in a series of revolutionary new technologies: that is, what they do for a living. But to the UK each of these steps has had an enormous effect on the economic growth and wellbeing of the country.
5G is set to transform mobility, healthcare, manufacturing, entertainment, city management, and a host of other sectors. CW and its partners in UK5G will help businesses and government develop a practical understanding what 5G might enable in innovation and productivity terms. UK5G will support businesses and organisations to share knowledge and understanding, build digital ecosystems, and develop market readiness and demand for 5G services.
In addition to the core delivery partners, the network of organisations in UK5G includes The Digital Catapult, Real Wireless, Digital Greenwich, KCL, the 5G Innovation Centre at the University of Surrey and the Smart Internet Lab of the University of Bristol. The expectation is that a large number of individuals and organisations will become involved, all working together through www.UK5G.org.
What is The Knowledge Transfer Network?
Most CW members will know The Knowledge Transfer Network and will probably have been to a KTN event as it specialises in cross-sector collaboration with a team of innovation experts to connect companies to its network of business, academics and other innovation support providers to get the best out of creativity, ideas and the latest discoveries. The KTN runs 12 national special interest groups, and publishes industry updates across 15 distinct science and technology communities every fortnight to more than 90,000 subscribers. Running more than 400 events per year, across the UK.
Who is TM Forum?
The TM Forum is a global, not-for-profit organisation for communication service providers. Members include communications and digital service providers, telephone companies, cable operators, network operators, software suppliers, equipment suppliers, systems integrators and management consultancies. With 850 member companies serving five billion customers across 180 countries, it has an extensive reach. It offers practical support and puts heavy emphasis on technology, producing APIs and technical standards as well as mentoring individuals in many of the world's largest telecom companies and providing interconnections between ecosystems.
A key task for UK5G is to help bring together the projects being undertaken in the extensive programme of 5G Testbeds and Trials funded by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS).
The government has already provided £16million of investment in developing 5G test network capability at the Universities of Surrey, Bristol and King's College London. This is now available as a national asset to support the ongoing development of the UK 5G ecosystem.
The winners of the £25million first phase of grant funding competition for 5G Testbeds and Trials were also announced on the 10th March 2018.
Subsequent projects will continue to focus on new and innovative uses of 5G technology. There is an emphasis on transport, with £35million for a joint project with the Local Full Fibre Networks programme to deliver next-generation, track-to-train connectivity in the TransPennine Railway initiative and a £5million grant for an initial trial to test 5G applications and deployment on roads. A budget of £10million has been allocated to create facilities where the security of 5G networks can be tested and proven, working with the National Cyber Security Centre.
On March 30 2018, the major 5G Urban Connected Communities Project competition was announced, which will be a substantial initiative across a large scale urban area. The purpose is to use the latest mobile technologies to meet people's connectivity needs, trialling new 5G services and applications to individuals and businesses - all with the aim of improving the quality of urban life and supporting local economic development. Expressions of interest are being sought from UK public sector authorities to lead the project, along with private sector partners. Selection will be in July.
Further announcements are expected as the UK Government continues to roll out the ambitious testbeds and trials programme.
|
GET CW JOURNAL ARTICLES STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX Subscribe now |
5G Smart Tourism
Lead organisation: West of England Combined Authority
Grant: £5m
This testbed will focus on delivering enhanced visual experiences for tourists using augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technology in major attractions in Bath and Bristol, including the Roman Baths and Millennium Square. Content and technology developments will be provided by the BBC and Aardman with support from the University of Bristol's Smart Internet Lab. It will demonstrate self-provision of 5G and Wi-Fi and innovative mmWave backhaul, and will also address safety issues by providing emergency service capacity through network slicing.
5G RuralFirst: Rural Coverage and Dynamic Spectrum Access Testbed and Trial
Lead organisation: Cisco
Grant: £4.3m
5G RuralFirst, led by Cisco and lead partner University of Strathclyde, will deliver testbeds and trials to exploit 5G benefits for rural communities and industries like agriculture, broadcasting, and utilities, to address the challenges of and build the business case for 5G rural deployment. Based primarily on the Orkney Islands, and in the farmlands of Shropshire and Somerset, the project will integrate spectrum sharing strategies for 5G; bringing connectivity to rural communities, enabling smart farming in partnership with Agri-Epi Centre (including drones, autonomous farm vehicles and remote veterinary inspections); innovative methods of delivering broadcast radio over 5G working with the BBC, alongside the delivery of 5G connectivity for IoT in utility and other industries in rural areas.
Worcestershire 5G Consortium Testbed and Trials
Lead organisation: Worcestershire Local Enterprise Partnership
Grant: £4.8m
A team of 5G and Industry 4.0 experts lead this project – working with Worcestershire LEP, the consortium comprises Worcestershire County Council, 5GIC at University of Surrey, AWTG, Huawei, O2, BT and Malvern Hills Science Park. With local businesses Worcester Bosch, and Yamazaki Mazak, it will focus on ways to increase industrial productivity through preventative and assisted maintenance using robotics, big data analytics and AR over 5G.
It will also have a cyber security aspect, with QinetiQ providing assurances on the 'security by design' of 5G and IoT technology. Entrepreneurs will have the opportunity to test 5G capabilities in a new commercial tech accelerator located at the Malvern Hills Science Park.
Liverpool 5G Testbed
Lead organisation: Sensor City
Grant: £3.5m
Sensor City will lead a consortium made up of public-sector health suppliers, the NHS, university researchers, local SMEs and a leading UK5G technology vendor. Funded for one year in the first instance, the project will see high value technologies including low-cost open source
5G networks, artificial intelligence, virtual reality and IoT deployed across deprived communities in the Liverpool City Region test bed. The consortium will use this technology to reduce the digital divide, while measuring the impact on patient monitoring and support, management of loneliness in older adults, aid to independents living in the home and the facilitation of communication between hospitals and the community.
5G Rural Integrated Testbed (5GRIT)
Lead organisation: Quickline Communications
Grant: £2.1m
5GRIT will be trialling innovative use of 5G technology across a range of rural applications, such as smart agriculture, tourism and connecting poorly-served communities, using shared spectrum in the TV bands and a mix of local ISPs and self-provision. The aim is to ultimately make high quality connectivity available across Cumbria, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Inverness-shire, Perthshire and Monmouthshire. Here, the consortium will develop 5G-ready AR apps for tourists and investigate how high-bandwidth wireless connectivity can increase food production in farming, including through use of AR and an unmanned aerial system.
AutoAir: 5G Testbed for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles
Lead organisation:Airspan Communications
Grant: £4.1m
AutoAir will aim to make 5G technologies available for the validation and development of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) at the UK's premiere vehicle proving ground at Millbrook. Fast travel speeds complicate cell-tower handoff, and autonomous vehicles will require more network bandwidth than is available currently. It will also investigate how these 5G connectivity solutions could be transferable to both road and rail transportation.
The project is based on the accelerated development of 5G small cells operating in both licensed Sub 6 GHz and mmWave bands on a shared neutral-host platform which allows multiple public and private 5G operators to simultaneously use the same infrastructure using network slicing. Consortium partners include McLaren Applied Technologies.
King's College London
In a UK first Vodafone UK and Ericsson, KCL, have demonstrated standalone pre-standard 5G in a 3.5 gigahertz (GHz) spectrum field trial. KCL is expert in lower layer mobile/wireless communications systems, right down to microwave circuit design and protocol creation and analysis. It's working on Radio Access, Networks and Mobile systems, and Intelligent Information Processing. Main areas of focus in radio access are cognitive radio networks, Intelligent resource allocation and spectrum management, Coordinated cellular networks with minimal backhaul overhead, robust and distributed network optimisation, and Non-coherent design methodologies in complex networks.
University of Bristol
Bristol's work on duplexers will be familiar to readers of the first issue of CWJournal where we looked at its technology to receive and transmit at the same frequency at the same time. The 5G program looks at autonomous vehicles, smart cities, network convergence, edge & mobile computing and network softwareisation. The 5G-XHaul project is a converged optical and wireless network solution able to flexibly connect Small Cells to the core network. The COSIGN consortium looks at the data plane infrastructure, using virtualization as a part of overall data centre orchestration. Bristol is doing advanced 5G research on power amplifiers, receivers, antennas and duplexers.
University of Surrey
The 5G innovation centre at the University of Surrey is one of the world's leading centres. It has groups researching many different areas including the new air interface design for dense small cells with the focus on higher spectral efficiency, reduced latency, relaxed synchronisation requirements, flexibility in spectrum aggregation and bandwidth and higher energy efficiency. Surrey is working on Light MAC (Medium Access Control) and RRM (Radio Resource Management) to maximise the number of users in a network and orchestrate of resources. There are projects on antenna and propagation, as well as new radio system architecture, and content looking at utilisation of context data.
Rosalind Singleton, UK Broadband [Chair]
Adam Beaumont aql, University of Leeds
Alastair Davidson, Wireless Infrastructure Group
Alex Connock, Missile
Antonella Faniuolo, OFCOM
Catherine Michel, Sigma Systems
Christopher Walker, QinetiQ
Claire Harvey, Red Bee Media
David Stokes, BT
Dimitra Simeonidou, University of Bristol
Dritan Kaleshi, Digital Catapult
Eman Martin-Vignerte, Bosch
Howard Benn, Samsung
Ian Simmons, Magna International
John Naylon, CBNL
Keith Robson, 5G Innovation Centre, SetSquared
Keith Willetts, Founder, TM Forum
Mansoor Hanif, Independent (ex-BT)
Mark Stansfeld, giffgaff, WLEP and Midlands Engine
Martin Green, Visteon
Mike Short, Dept for International Trade, EM3 LEP
Paul Beastall, Cambridge Consultants
Rick Robinson, Arup, West Midlands LEP
Simon Fletcher, Real Wireless
Sylvia Lu, u-blox
UK5G has recruited an industry-led senior Advisory Board, chaired by industry luminary Rosalind Singleton, to help pull together the UK5G story and provide independent feedback to government. UK5G will work with partners to understand the current ecosystem and look at the state of capability, both in terms of the services provided by the technology industry and the wider industries which will be its users. It's important that these groups will reflect the world and industry view, as well as having a role in influencing those views to enhance the position of the UK. Furthermore, presenting the UK5G offer internationally in a consistent way, enabling interested investors to understand the depth and ambition of what is happening will be an important role for the UK5G.
Ian Smith from the DCMS who is the 5G Testbeds and Trials Programme Director said: "The Government is determined that the UK be a world leader in 5G and that we provide reliable, high-speed connectivity to our towns, cities and rural areas. We are rightly very excited about what UK5G can do for the growing 5G ecosystem in the UK, to help make that vision a reality. I'm delighted to endorse UK5G's very impressive Advisory Board membership and look forward to working closely with them as we develop future plans for the 5G programme."
The Advisory Board will build and nurture a community that brings together industry, researchers and research organisations, the public sector, entrepreneurs, innovators and end users to accelerate the UK's development and take-up of 5G, Its remit is to share the knowledge and lessons of emerging 5G R&D activities and enable new introductions and collaborations between technologists, potential new entrants and major industrial adopters. The board will identify key developments, opportunities, innovation challenges, and barriers to adoption. provide an up-to-date information source for industry; a clear location for research, technology and industry collaboration; and an attractive offer for overseas businesses wishing to understand the advantages of investment into the UK and its test-bed network. It will work in partnership with the Government, support inward and outward investment opportunities and promote Knowledge Building and sharing through working groups and members' events.
Singleton told attendees at the launch: "UK5G is a wonderful opportunity for industry and our research base to work hand in hand with Government to help promote the development of 5G, through test bed and trials funding, policy-making and network support."
Technology may never move as slowly as it does today, but at least with UK5G to help co-ordinate progress there will be a way of keeping up with it as it speeds ahead.
While the spotlight has been on new radio, ETSI ISG NGP has been quietly working on next-generation protocols for packet routing to meet operators' requirements for 5G, such as ultra-low latency, in core and access networks. The move to edge computing, with servers no longer being located on the internet, reduces the incentive to use TCP/IP, and the time may now be right for a radical change to the way packets are routed.
In 2018, ISG NGP needs to firm up on recommendations for 3GPP Release 17, and to organise trials and demonstrations of the proposed technology. Increased participation is needed from those who are able to help drive a change away from dependence on TCP/IP.
If you can contribute, or would like to be kept informed, please e-mail John Grant, the chairman for 2018. The group's homepage is at http://www.etsi.org/technologies-clusters/technologies/next-generation-protocols
Bob currently is a senior advisor for the UK Telecoms Innovation Network (UKTIN), having been interim head of this new organisation to February 2023. Bob has helped to create an innovation network for the UK Telecoms industry, bringing together industry, academia, and government to catalyse telecoms R&D investment, cooperation, and commercialisation.
Founded in 2022, UKTIN is delivered by a consortium of four partners - who draw on their distinct strengths in a collaborative approach: The Digital Catapult (Lead), Cambridge Wireless, WM5G and the University of Bristol. UKTIN has been initially funded by the UK Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to drive the Telecom Supply Chain Diversification Strategy.
From 2018 to October 2022 Bob led the UK5G programme on behalf of CW. CW was the lead partner for a consortium chosen by the Department of Digital, Culture Media and Sport, to create and deliver the national 5G Innovation Network. The consortium included CW, the KTN and TM Forum. UK5G brought together and marketed the UK’s 5G eco-system - including the national Testbed & Trials programme along with other business-led 5G initiatives.
Bob was CEO of CW from May 2015 to November 2018 focusing on leading the development of the organisation, broadening its reach with other sectors and clusters, while retaining the unique culture and dynamism of the CW community.
Prior to working at CW, Bob was Director for Technology at UK Trade & Investment (now part of the Department for Business and Trade) where he successfully led national teams helping UK tech companies to access overseas opportunities as well as attracting technology inward investment into the UK. He also coordinated the UKTI science and innovation agenda and was responsible for the delivery of UKTI events from small missions to large trade fairs.
