FANTASTIC-5G Air Interface Group Launched with 8 Million Euros in EC Funding

You just can’t keep up with all the new entities developing standards for fifth generation mobile networks.

A group of 16 firms are collaborating on a new air interface below 6 GHz for 5G networks.

The “FANTASTIC-5G” (Flexible Air iNTerfAce for Scalable service delivery wiThin wIreless Communication networks of the 5th Generation) project will focus on capacity, flexibility and energy efficiency of the next generation of mobile networks.

Future mobile networks need to become even more flexible and efficient than 4G, 3G and 2G networks, proponents argue.

The group aims to create a new multi-service air interface that operates below 6 GHz frequency for 5G networks, and is:

·       Highly flexible, to support different types of data traffic.

·       Scalable, to support an ever-growing number of networked devices.

·       Versatile, to support diverse device types and traffic/transmission characteristics.

·       Energy- and resource-efficient, to better use the available spectrum.

·       Future-proofed, enabling easy upgrades to future software releases.

FANTASTIC-5G is funded by eight million Euros provided by the European Commission under the EU´s “Horizon 2020” initiative aiming to advance digital Europe.

The members of FANTASTIC-5G include service providers (Orange, Telecom Italia), component and infrastructure vendors (Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Samsung, Sequans Communications, Wings ICT Solutions), universities (Aalborg University, Politecnico di Bari, Institut Mines-Telecom/Telecom Bretagne, University of Bremen) and research institutes (Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya (CTTC), Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives - Laboratoire d’électronique et de technologie de l’information (CEA-Leti), Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institut (HHI)) from Europe.