MINTS · Millimeter-wave Networking and Sensing for Beyond 5G

Millimeter-wave Networking and Sensing for Beyond 5G

The global telecommunications market has become tremendously competitive due to the saturation of traditional products (e.g., mobile broadband). However, new markets such as industry 4.0 and autonomous driving demand extremely high data rates which can only be provided at mmWave frequencies. To successfully overcome mmWave challenges, a closely integrated, skilled and multidisciplinary team was formed to co-create innovative technology and applications. The ETN for Millimeter-wave NeTworking and Sensing for Beyond 5G (MINTS) offered the first training program on mmWave networks that covered the full stack from physical layer to application. The context and overall objectives for the MINTS projects relate to making mmWave sensing and networking feasible by overcoming path-loss limitations by exploiting dense deployments. The potential of mmWave technology for future mobile networks led to a significant investment in research and also motivated the European Commission to recommend opening up parts of the mmWave spectrum for broadband services. This is not only important for ubiquitous mobile broadband services, but is a key requirement for the forthcoming industry 4.0, vehicle-to-everything, augmented reality and similar new applications. The primary goal of MINTS was to train ESRs to co-create the required mmWave algorithms and protocols together with the novel use cases mmWave technology is supposed to enable. Specifically, providing continuous and reliable connectivity in extremely dense and highly mobile scenarios has been an open challenge, and understanding how to tune an mmWave network towards a specific future application with its particular mix of throughput, latency and resilience requirements is still in its infancy. The high diversity of the requirements of different application scenarios (in terms of latency, mobility, resilience, etc.), together with new sensing capabilities, call for adaptive and tailored network solutions rather than use case-agnostic one-size-fits-all designs. Therefore, the overall aim of MINTS was to provide a concerted effort to: 1) building up a highly skilled labour force in the mmWave technology sector; 2) mitigating the impact of network dynamics and density on the performance and resilience of mmWave networks; and 3) advancing mmWave technology in order to leverage it in emerging EU and international markets.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union