On Jan 8-9, 2013, the kick-off meeting of Research & Development project CROWD (Connectivity management for eneRgy Optimised Wireless Dense networks) was held in Pisa (Italy). CROWD is co-funded by the European Commission within the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

The project motivation is that the advances of mobile network technologies cannot keep the pace of demands from users, because of both their growing numbers and their increasing capacity requirements. In CROWD the partners have then considered of paramount importance to analyse an evolution of mobile networks where a massive capacity improvement is provided not only by faster wireless technologies, but mostly by deployment of a very high number of small cells (e.g., WiFi, LTE). This scenario yields a huge increase of density of the wireless networks which, without adequate improvements, will prevent the available resources from being fully exploited, due to the increased interference and higher signalling traffic load. The goal of CROWD is to make extreme density deployments work efficiently, in terms of both the quality of service provided to users and the overall energy consumption, so as to reduce operational costs of telecom operators and reduce the environmental burden.

CROWD has a duration of 30 months and a total cost of 4.5 million Euros and its consortium is up to the very high project expectations and ambitious goals. The Consortium is coordinated by Intecs, an Italian company leader on the development and testing of software for real-time and embedded systems, recently merged with Technolabs to increase its potential and competences in the telecommunications sector. Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs (France) bring all the expertise and knowledge of one of the biggest worldwide telecommunications manufacturer.

The best research groups in the area, coming from prestigious institutions such as the Institute IMDEA Networks, the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, and the Universität Paderborn, will be crucial to define realistic models for wireless dense networks and to design algorithms and protocols which can fully exploit their potential. Validation, which will be based on experimental trials with prototypes, will be orchestrated by Signalion (Germany), a National Instruments company which is specialized on testing of wireless and networking equipment. Finally, telecom operators within the Consortium will be represented by Orange, the official brand of France Telecom, with over 150 million mobile users in the world.

Speakers:

Claudio Cicconetti, Arianna Morelli and Michele Rosellini (Intecs); Laurent Roullet (Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs France), Vincenzo Mancuso & Vincenzo Sciancalepore (Institute IMDEA Networks); Tim Hentschel & Carsten Unger (Signalion); Antonio de la Oliva & Pablo Serrano (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid); Holger Karl & Martin Draxler (Universität Paderborn)