Leti Announces New Project for 5G Prototype for 2018 Winter Olympics

Leti, a research institute of CEA Tech, has announced a new European and South Korean project, 5G CHAMPION, to deliver a fully integrated and operational 5G prototype in conjunction with the 2018 Winter Olympics, to be held in South Korea.

The Leti team, made up of eight European and 13 Korean partners, reportedly will develop a new architecture that provides efficient end-to-end system performance for 5G radio-access, core-network and satellite technologies. The institute said that this will be the first time that terrestrial wireless communication that includes enablers like mmWave access will be combined with disruptive satellite communication. The goal is to form a 5G network with multi-radio-access technologies (multi-RAT) that is optimized to serve user equipment in various applications.

“5G next-generation communication systems will be a global game changer from technological, economic, societal and environmental perspectives,” said Emilio Calvanese Strinati, Director, Smart Devices & Telecommunications Strategy Programs, Leti. “Showcasing key enabling technologies for a proof-of-concept environment at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, Korea, will allow maximum visibility for the available technology two years ahead of the official launch of 5G in 2020.”

Coordinated by Leti, the project will focus on some of the main challenges for the design of the 5G networks, including:

• Improving latency in the millisecond range
• Providing high throughput in very dense user environments
• Enabling cost-effective network management
• Enhancing quality of service in high-speed mobility conditions, high precision/integrity location and timing estimation
• Allowing ubiquitous service provisioning, as well as flexibility in equipment reconfiguration through software

In addition to Leti, the 21 partners are:

Europe: NOKIA, Intel Deutschland, Thales AS, Fraunhofer HHI, University of Oulu, Tlepespazio, iMinds

South Korea: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) (the Korean project coordinator), SK Telecom, KT, SMRT, Eluon, Clever Logic, Insoft, Mobigen, HFR, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Dankook University and Hanyang University