WiVi-2020 · Wireless Visionaries for 2020

Wireless Visionaries for 2020

The industrial telecommunications sector stands currently at the forefront of a new era, which is marked by the transition to the new generation of wireless communications, namely the rise of 5G. With the recent explosion of the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications and the Internet-of-Things applications, the internet traffic is growing exponentially. Future networks should support applications with extremely variant Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, from low throughput and generally medium delay (M2M) to very high throughput and low delay (high definition real-time video). These challenges have not been yet addressed in network deployments within buildings, resulting in very low quality mobile access perceived by indoor users. Efforts to improve the wireless network architecture focusing on flexible spectral co-existence and densification of existing wireless infrastructures with heterogeneous Radio Access Technologies (RATs), as well as fusing cellular mobile with Wi-Fi have a core role in improving network efficiency. At the same time, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) comes to offer a centrally controlled programmable network model that lies over the physical infrastructure and allows for fast adaptation, without the limitations that hold back traditional networks. SDN is focusing on dynamic run-time resource management, routing, switching and forwarding of packets. On the other hand, putting the user apps into focus, Application Defined Networking (ADN) is concerned with the routing and switching of applications and the forwarding of sessions. Its model is a mirror of SDN, at the application layers (4-7 of the OSI model). Putting these pieces together the WiVi-2020 project brings together an academic/industrial consortium with complementary skills and views to address three objectives, as defined by joint discussions, considering mainly the needs, interests and activities of the involved industrial partners of WiVi-2020: 1. Take advantage of the coexistence of different radio technologies via flexibility on the usage of spectrum and traffic over multiple-radio devices. 2. Investigate architectures and planning for optimized indoor heterogeneous radio access of software-defined networks that support services with different QoS requirements. 3. Optimize resources scheduling and traffic flows for virtualized networks based on ADNs.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union