Europe reached a major milestone on the road towards 5G with the launch of the first phase projects of the European 5G Public Private Partnership (5G-PPP) on 1 July 2015. Huawei is a key contributor to this joint effort. The 5G-PPP initiative is expected to leverage a total of €3.5 billion in private investment, boosted by €700 million in EU funding.
 
The 5G-PPP aims at strengthening European 5G research and global cooperation in this field with a view to achieving communications infrastructure capable of coping with future wireless demand by 2020. This involves providing 1000 times higher wireless area capacity, saving up to 90% of energy per service provided, and creating a secure, reliable and dependable internet with “zero perceived” downtime.
 
Huawei has been at the forefront of this collaborative effort since the very beginning, as Board Member of the 5G Infrastructure Association, and is now contributing with its expertise and global resources to some of the most future-oriented projects being implemented under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme.
 
“5G is the standard that will take us into the era of ‘smart everything’. This will create vast business opportunities while enhancing quality of life on a number of levels. Building fruitful alliances will be key to bringing us closer to transforming our vision of 5G into a global standard. Europe has huge potential for boosting 5G development by federating efforts, and the 5G-PPP is a good illustration of this approach,” said Dr. Wen Tong, Huawei Wireless CTO. “Huawei is investing a tremendous research effort into this key enabling technology. Our collaboration with European industry and research partners is at the very heart of this commitment: we are working with European partners, including verticals, at the cutting-edge of global 5G development.”
 
Huawei will be leading work packages in four of the five projects:
  • METIS-II: Mobile and wireless communications enablers for twenty-twenty (2020) information society–II
  • FANTASTIC-5G: Flexible air interface for scalable service delivery within the wireless communications networks of the fifth generation
  • mmMAGIC: Millimetre-wave based mobile radio access networks for the fifth generation integrated communications
  • 5G-Xhaul: Dynamic reconfigurable optical-wireless backhaul/fronthaul with cognitive control plane for small cells and cloud-RANs
  • 5Gex: 5G Exchange, Multi-Domain Orchestration for Software Defined Infrastructures
 
In addition to these new projects, Huawei is forging ahead with its other European 5G initiatives. It is conducting a joint 5G research programme with the University of Surrey's 5G Innovation Centre in the UK, and plans to invest GBP5 million in 5G research and a testbed there by 2018. 
 
Together with its European partners, Huawei has launched the 5G Vertical Industry Accelerator (5G VIA) in Munich targeting a large-scale 5G testbed to simulate real-world scenarios with the involvement of vertical industries.
 
At 5G World Summit 2015 in June 2015, Huawei received the “Biggest Contribution to 5G Development” award for its continuous innovation in the field of 5G, particularly with regard to new air interface technologies. 
 
Further information is available at www.huawei.eu.