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Participants
Summary
The new UK-India Future Networks Initiative (UKI-FNI) will explore innovations in the supply chain for hardware and software systems that provide access, connectivity and services for future digital networks. The UKI-FNI project, collaborating with scientists and engineers in India, will also develop a joint vision and research strategy for the future of 5G and 6G.
Prof Gerard Parr, Chair in Telecommunications Engineering is leading the project. Partners include Regius Prof Rahim Tafazolli at the University of Surrey; Prof Lajos Hanzo at the University of Southampton; and Prof Steve Hailes at University College London. Key partners in India are Prof KVS Hari of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and Prof Subrat Kar of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi.
The research will explore the technical requirements for a testbed connecting India and the UK to test innovative solutions. It aims to increase competitiveness and choice of vendors that design, manufacture and deploy systems such as antennae, transmission and switching equipment at base stations, as well as the integration components that support backhaul transport and associated network management systems.
India has an excellent research and innovation base in networking systems software and has the complex testbeds required for proving new technologies. Indeed, under a previous £20 million EPSRC initiative led in the UK by Prof Parr (the India-UK Advanced Technology Centre), the team collaborated for more than 10 years with partners across India – an experience that will be leveraged in the UKI-FNI project.
There is a global push to explore innovations that will deliver the infrastructure, systems and services for next-generation mobile communication networks. Part of this drive is coming from network operators who are seeking solutions to reduce the costs for network components by aiming to remove dependence and lock-in to a small group of telecom original equipment manufacturers.
Initially the focus is on accelerating development of Open Radio Access Networks (OpenRAN).
OpenRAN is a way of designing existing technological components to allow them to be used within a network. Instead of using a proprietary (single-source) system to build the radio access portion of a 5G network, a fully developed and standards-based OpenRAN would allow telecoms operators to integrate components made by various manufacturers.
Funding
Partners
