“Equipment manufacturers, R&D and innovation centres, vertical industries, service providers and the public bodies themselves are playing a key role in the sizing and final impact of 5G on society and the economy”
5gEdge Lab - Experimental environment for use cases and lines of research seeking to innovate in 5G networks and the Edge Computing paradigm
5G technology will have a cross-cutting impact. They are expected to dramatically boost various areas in our day-to-day life. 5G networks have features of an economy of scale in highly differentiated scenarios where different sectors will play a leading role.
In 2019, the first commercial deployments of 5G networks were carried out. While such deployments are available through several different network operators, the latter will not be the only key players: this is an essential point when understanding the need for laboratories to provide experimental environments where companies can test the benefits of 5G.
Implementation of 5G in many different industrial sectors
Equipment manufacturers, R&D and innovation centres, vertical industries, service providers and the public bodies themselves are playing a key role for the first time in the sizing and final impact of 5G on society and the economy. A representative example of this collaboration is reflected in the 5G ecosystems created in recent years, like the effort that the 5G-PPP (Public Private Partnership) has carried out in Europe, launching more than 40 projects seeking to offer solutions, architectures, technologies and standards for next-generation communications infrastructure.
The implementation of 5G will have an economic impact on all levels and in many different industrial sectors. Sources from the Spanish Ministry for Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation (MINECO) predict a result of more than €14bn in Spain by 2025.
TECNALIA has a suitable experimentation infrastructure with which to be able to respond to the requests of companies that are already beginning to experiment – and in some cases to implement – solutions supported by advanced communication and processing architectures. And that is why the 5gEdge lab was born – as an experimental 5G network for applications based on Edge Computing.
Aims of the 5gEdge lab
- Validation of advanced use cases using complex architectures integrating 5G communications, large bandwidth, low latency and/or mass, with different levels of data processing, particularly edge processing, using a variety of resources (devices, local resources, 5G resources). This validation is required before a final development or deployment of the validated solution can be launched.
- Support for R&D activities aimed at developing solutions geared towards these advanced use cases.
TECNALIA is working on several projects involving this technology, such as TERMINET and Bind5G. TECNALIA also improves excellence in service to companies. An example of this is ArgituML, where we increase the adoption of artificial intelligence in industry through the application of the MLOps paradigm, and the development of tools based on microservice architecture, integrated with various corporate solutions and covering the different stages of the life cycle of an artificial intelligence project.
**This laboratory has been funded by the Basque Government - Grant programme for the acquisition of scientific technological infrastructures - APITEK. PZ-2021/00003 - 5G-EDGE.
