CTTC was recently funded in the context of the fourth call of the 7th framework of European Union, to carry out three new research projects, whose kick-off meetings took place during January 2010. Each one of these projects will study aspects related with the future broadband communication systems.

 

BeFEMTO project (Broadband evolved Femto Network) is an Integrated Project (IP) led by Sagemcom, France, which aims at studying the impact that femtocells will have on market and society. Femtocells are low cost base stations, which provide cellular service to small areas, such as apartments, offices, etc. Many operators (e.g. Vodafone, T-Mobile, telecom Italia, in Europe, NTT Docomo and Softbank in Japan, Sprint, AT&T and Verizon in US) are currently making strategic investments in this technology, which is expected to compete with WiFi to improve the quality of service of the residential sector. BeFEMTO consortium consists of different operators, e.g. Docomo and Telefónica, and manufacturers, e.g. Sagecom, Qualcomm and NEC.

 

BuNGee project (Beyond Next Generation Mobile Broadband) is a Strategic Target Research Project (STREP) managed by Alvarion, Israel, the leader in Wimax technology. This project aims to increase the access bandwidth of the users of future wireless systems. In particular, this project proposes to increase this bandwidth by a factor 10x, with respect to the current capacity, with the ambitious objective to achieve the capacity of 1 Gbit/s per Km2. The technique that is going to be considered is based on improving the efficiency with which Wimax radio spectrum is used. In particular, a joint design of access and backhaul network is proposed for coexistence in the same spectrum band, by means of smart interference management approaches.

Finally, STRONGEST project (Scalable Tunable and Resilient Optical Networks Guaranteeing Extremely-high Speed Transport) is an Integrated Project led by Telecom Italia, whose objective is to design and validate novel architectures for optical networks, which minimize the use of IP routers. These innovative architectures will develop a scalable, resilient and cost-effective transport network, offering ultra-high capacity to the end users in the broadband society of the future. In this context, STRONGEST searches for solutions to reduce the energy consumption and to develop systems capable of guaranteeing certain levels of end-to-end quality of service. STRONGEST consortium consists of the most important manufacturers and operators in Europe, such as Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, and Nokia Siemens Networks, Telefónica I+D, Deutsche Telekom and British Telecommunications.

The 7th Framework Program (7FP) of European Union funds research and innovation projects in many areas of knowledge, among them, the Information and Communications Technology area (ICT). The final objective is to improve the competitiveness of European industry, as well as guaranteeing that the development of new technologies in Europe is in accordance to the market demand and the society needs. CTTC has been already participating in European projects funded by the Framework Program for six years. In this context, CTTC is collaborating, exchanging ideas and sharing research lines with many other European institutions, research centres, universities, operators and manufacturers.