Pioneering the 5G Advancement
University of Surrey's CCSR Secures £35 Million for 5G Innovation Centre
The Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR) at the University of Surrey has received a £35 million funding boost to build a new research centre focused on 5G networking. The funding, a combination of government funds and contributions from corporate sponsors including Huawei, Samsung, and Telefonica, will be used to construct the Innovation Centre, accommodate researchers and businesses, purchase research equipment, and deploy a test bed on campus for demonstrations and proof-of-concepts.
The CCSR's research on 5G will focus on the spectrum below 5 GHz, including 4G, 3G, and 2G spectrum, as well as some broadcasting spectrum at 700MHz. The aim is to investigate the propagation characteristics of these frequencies to determine their suitability for a mobile radio, with the ultimate goal of providing huge amounts of capacity for a fraction of the energy consumption that is currently used in mobile networks.
Commercial availability of 5G technology began globally around 2019, with initial non-standalone (NSA) deployments, and is now increasingly transitioning to 5G Standalone (SA) architecture. The global adoption of the 5G Mobile Core Network (MCN) is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 6% through 2025 and beyond, driven by SA adoption and enterprise applications such as private 5G networks.
Network capacity improvements for 5G are expected to be significantly enhanced by the integration of AI-driven optimizations. AI can increase the effective network capacity, especially in high-density areas, by managing traffic demand and optimizing resources, potentially outpacing the bandwidth consumption from new AI applications in the near term. Enhanced 5G capabilities also include dynamic network slicing and Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC), which improve on-demand performance and reduce latency.
Energy efficiency improvements are a key implicit goal of evolving 5G deployments, particularly with 5G Standalone and AI-enabled networking, which can enable more efficient operations and reduce costs through autonomous network management. Although exact quantified energy efficiency gains are not specified in the current sources, the move toward L4 autonomous networking enabled by AI suggests a future reduction in operational energy usage by mobile network operators.
The congestion and lack of capacity in mobile networks is expected to become apparent in around three years. The milimetric bands of 60GHz to 90GHz will also be explored for 5G, as a large amount of bandwidth is available in that frequency band.
The University of Surrey's CCSR has been leading research on the next generation mobile network, 5G, for some time. The centre, which is the largest academic research centre for mobile communications in the UK, has contributed to the development of 2G, 3G, and 4G standards. Work on Release 12 of the 3GPP standard, the first iteration of the mobile networking standard since 4G, has already begun.
The test bed for the new Innovation Centre will consist of a number of base stations and mobile terminals and cover an area of four kilometres squared. The centre is expected to play a crucial role in the development and deployment of 5G technology, helping to address the growing demand for mobile data traffic and drive innovation in the field.
Sources:
[1] "5G Market Size, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2021-2028." Allied Market Research, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/5g-market
[2] "Private 5G Networks Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Component, By Application, By Region And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028." Grand View Research, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/private-5g-networks-market
[3] "How AI is Driving the Evolution of 5G." Forbes, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2020/07/22/how-ai-is-driving-the-evolution-of-5g/?sh=468d3d9f62c1
Data-and-cloud-computing technology plays a crucial role in the University of Surrey's 5G Innovation Centre, as the vast amounts of data generated and processed by the research will be stored and analyzed in the cloud.
The integration of AI-driven optimizations in 5G networking, a key focus of the CCSR's research, is expected to be one of the technological advancements that will be studied and further developed in the Innovation Centre.
