5G ExPerimentation Infrastructure hosting CloudnativE Netapps for public proTection and disaster RElief
Overview
5G is expected to become the mainstream broadband wireless technology of the next decade, significantly enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of high-demand operations such as Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR). The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) recognises both LTE-Advanced and 5G systems as mission-critical technologies for PPDR. These technologies can meet the needs of mission-critical intelligence by supporting essential voice, data, and video services. As an International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) radio interface, 5G offers reliable, high-speed connectivity crucial for emergency response, enabling real-time communication and coordination in critical situations where rapid decision-making is essential.
5G-EPICENTRE aimed to deliver an open, end-to-end experimentation 5G platform focused on software solutions for Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR). The developed platform enables SMEs and developers to acquire knowledge of the latest 5G applications for first responders and crisis management, while allowing them to build up and test their solutions. The project enabled the development and integration of an end-to-end 5G experimentation platform, supporting federation, prototyping, lab validation and experimentation. Every technical activity, including optimisation algorithms, network orchestration APIs, novel analytics ML and visualisation solutions, were addressed using an iterative and incremental approach, following the SCRUM scientific and techno-logical methodology.
Objectives
Build an end-to-end 5G experimentation platform specifically tailored to the needs of the public safety and emergency response market players.
Pilot 5G systems in PPDR-based trials, successfully demonstrating 5G-EPICENTRE onboarded apps as a crucial communications accompaniment to public safety mission critical communications technologies.
Cultivate a ‘5G Experiments as a Service’ model, which will enable developers and SMEs to experiment with PPDR applications in parameterised, easily repeatable, and shareable environments.
Facilitate automation, continuous deployment and multi-access edge computing supported by containerised network functions, so as to reduce service creation time and time-to-market for 5G solutions.
Leverage Artificial Intelligence for achieving cognitive experiment coordination and lifecycle management, including dynamic 5G slicing, application awareness and insightful ML-driven analytics.
Implement impact-driven dissemination, standardisation and exploitation.
eBOS Role in the Project
eBOS’ role in 5G-EPICENTRE was three-fold. Firstly, eBOS was responsible for implementing the northbound API, leveraging its expertise in dashboard development, APIs and systems integration. Secondly, eBOS was responsible for the design and implementation of the project’s communication strategy and plan. As part of this, eBOS designed, developed and maintained the project’s website and social networks’ accounts, and promoted the use of the project’s results among European ICT SMEs, aiming to enable and encourage them to adopt its exploitable assets and services. Thirdly, eBOS, as the Ethics Manager of the project, led the development of the ethical and legal framework, ensuring compliance with ethics requirements.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 101016521.
