(BARCELONA, 19 Feb 2018) The European Commission is funding, through a Private Public Partnership (PPP) within the Horizon 2020 funding program, a number of Europe-wide collaborative research and innovation projects to develop the next generation of mobile wireless communications, 5G.
One of these, 5GCAR, consists of activities aimed at enabling the connected and autonomous car using 5G technology.
5GCAR gathers efforts from key partners in the ICT industry in Europe, including equipment and device vendors, SMEs, mobile network operators, universities and research institutions, all of them in tight collaboration with car manufacturers.
The Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), located in Castelldefels, Barcelona, is a partner in the 5GCAR project. Two of its research groups are involved: the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications department, led by Dr. Jesus Alonso-Zarate, and; the Optical Networks and Systems (ONS) department, led by Dr. Raúl Muñoz.
5GCAR will be presenting a demo at this edition of the Mobile World Congress (MWC18). As part of the 5GBarcelona initiative, aimed at promoting the city of Barcelona as a 5G hub in Europe, the Mobile World Capital has invited the 5G Infrastructure Association (5GIA), the private sector side of the 5G-PPP, to have a space at its booth at MWC18. The space will show demos of key projects now being undertaken under the 5G-PPP umbrella.
5GCAR MWC18 demo, led by Dr. Ricard Vilalta and a team of engineers and researchers brought together by CTTC, with the collaboration from other partners in the project (Ericsson, Huawei, VISCODA, and King’s College London (KCL), will stage a fully operational demo showcasing some of the key innovations being explored in the project. These include the use of IoT-based V2X communications, Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), and Advanced Real-Time Image Processing, all orchestrated from a central computing “brain”.
The demo will show how all these technologies can be combined together to enable safer driving in city streets. While the project is preparing a real demo using actual cars that will be ready by the end of the project (scheduled for May 2019), the demo presented by CTTC at this edition of the MWC18 will be based on small-sized cars intended to validate the ideas explored in the project.
For those interested, the demo will be held at the Mobile World Capital booth during all four days of MWC18. Visitors will be able to see the demo and chat with experts from CTTC and other 5GCAR partners involved in the design and implementation of the demo, to learn more details about the technology being developed and ask any questions they may have.
This demo at MWC18, the biggest event devoted to telecommunications worldwide, aims to show just one of the potential benefits 5G technology can bring. The positive impact that 5G-enabled connected cars can have on traffic efficiency and safety is just one of the benefits 5G technologies will have on the economy and society overall.
For further information, please, contact Ms. Laura Casaus (laura.casaus@cttc.es, +34.93.645.29.00)