IRAM · Intelligent New Radio Access Network: Deployment and Management
Horizon Europe — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2023-06-01 → 2025-05-31
- EU contribution
- €148,478
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Intelligent New Radio Access Network: Deployment and Management
The project is driven by the need to transform mobile networks in response to the growing demands of the fourth industrial revolution. Technologies such as the Internet of Everything (IoE), digital twins, and autonomous systems are generating massive volumes of mobile traffic, pushing existing radio access networks (RANs) to their limits. The project specifically targets the Next-Generation RAN (NG-RAN) infrastructure enhancement, with emphasis on integrating Integrated Access and Backhaul (IAB) nodes—an emerging paradigm expected to play a pivotal role in realizing cost-effective and flexible 6G rollouts. IRAM tackles two fundamental and interrelated challenges: the first is autonomous network planning and control, which removes the dependence on human-driven, static planning in dynamic, heterogeneous environments. The second is the problem of reliable mmWave backhauling, which is essential for sustaining high data rates and low latency in dense network topologies but remains fragile under blockage, mobility, and environmental variations. IRAM situates itself within the broader strategic vision of digital sovereignty, energy-efficient networking, and sustainable infrastructure promoted by the European 6G roadmap. By developing self-managing radio architectures, the project supports key European goals in terms of digital inclusion, technological autonomy, energy efficiency and Ubiquitous connectivity. While not focused directly on social sciences or humanities, the project addresses societal inclusion and digital equity implicitly by enabling more scalable and affordable network access—key pillars in the broader socio-technical transformation driven by future 6G systems.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The fifth and sixth generations (5G/6G) of cellular networks have to handle an unprecedented surge in data traffic, which comes as a result of the emergence of a wide range of applications, notably, the Internet of Everything, haptic internet, digital-twin, to name a few. On one hand, mobile users expect to experience high-speed and reliable wireless access at an affordable cost. On the other hand, service providers aim at maximizing profits and are expecting cost-effective solutions from wireless industry.Increasing the capacity of the Next Generation Radio Access Network (NG-RAN) capitalizes in a part on reducing the cell sizes and the transmissions on high-frequency bands (e.g., millimeter wave) that offer small coverage. However, these solutions call for a dense deployment of base stations, where traditionally each comes with the expenses of establishing fiber links to the core network and a site acquisition (tower lease). The wireless industry leaders opt for developing flexible and more cost-effective NG-RAN that revolve around the dense deployment of low-cost radio access nodes with Integrated Access and Backhauling (IAB). The wireless backhauling/fronthauling feature will ease the task of IAB nodes deployment/relocation and save in the cost of the fiber-based bakchauling network. Although IAB is an attractive solution that could make dense deployments economically viable, efficient approaches for the optimization and management of the resulting large-scale and heterogeneous NG-RAN remain subject to investigation. Together with my supervisor Prof O. Ercetin, I will contribute to the efforts of building cost-effective NG-RANs empowered by IAB nodes, in particular, to the automation of the deployment, operation, and fast-recovery of NG-RANs. This project investigates two overlapping and complementing research problems: unsupervised planning and optimization of NG-RAN; and reliable backhauling/fronthauling wireless network for IAB nodes.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- SABANCI UNIVERSITESI · IstanbulCoordinatorTürkiye
Links
- View on CORDIS
- DOI: 10.3030/101108094
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e50bf283c5&appId=PPGMS
- https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e51d77f34b&appId=PPGMS
Data: CORDIS, © European Union