5TONIC, an open 5G Networks Research and Innovation Laboratory

11 November 2015

IMDEA Networks Institute and Telefónica R&D have established a Research and Innovation Laboratory focusing on 5G Technologies. The laboratory, with the acronym 5TONIC, is intended to be an open research and innovation ecosystem focused on 5G technologies, in which industry and academia come together to boost technology and business innovative ventures. The main Laboratory site will be located at IMDEA Networks’ headquarters in Leganés, Madrid.

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5G networks are considered the gateway to the age of “connected everything” that awaits us. The development of 5G has thus become a landmark in the global competition for technological leadership. The 5TONIC Laboratory is born to promote joint project development, joint entrepreneurial ventures, discussion fora, events and a conference site, all in an international environment oriented to achieve the highest technological impact in this area. 5TONIC will provide physical space and infrastructure to support a wide range of systems, functionality, services and applications allowing the deployment, analysis, testing, trial and demonstration of choice technologies currently considered the driving forces of 5G development. With the 2020 Horizon Program in sight, the private-public initiative 5TONIC aims to tackle the challenge of creating a blueprint for the new technologies and standards that are to define future 5G networks, the backbone of the “networked society”.

5TONIC will serve to demonstrate and display the capabilities and interoperation of pre-commercial 5G equipment, services and applications by leading global companies in the 5G arena. In this way, the Laboratory will help interested industry to perform a realistic evaluation of technology choices, together with the latest innovations in the core network. Now launched by Telefonica R&D and IMDEA Networks, other participating companies are welcome to join up as members or collaborators to enjoy the potential benefits of 5TONIC: a Laboratory that will allow them to carry out evaluations about the technical and financial feasibility of a given technology, analyze the hidden deployment costs or the complexity of various solutions, establish regulatory aspects to be addressed, etc.

The Laboratory will be oriented to research, field test and demonstrate all technologies and equipment required to support 5G communications, services and applications. 5TONIC will be structured initially in two main areas: the 5G Virtual Software Network Area and the 5G Wireless Systems Area. The 5G Virtual Software Network Area will be focused on Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software Defined Networking (SDN), security services, network control and management planes, cloud services, signaling, and related areas. The 5G Wireless Systems Area will be focused on the air interface, radio aspects, duplexing, multiplexing, media access control, spectrum, interference, and mobility tracking, all based on a multi-RAT (multi-Radio Access Technologies) approach. In addition to those core technological areas, the Laboratory may include experimentation on other related topics such as energy efficiency, harvesting and management (in particular for IoT devices), security and privacy, and measurements and monitoring.