Next generation of mobile networks: Fraunhofer HHI furthers 5G research

January 30, 2018

2012

When research work began on a 5G-related project in 2012, the next generation of mobile networks was hardly known to the public. Three years later, the EU research project 5GNOW, in which Fraunhofer HHI participated among others, was honored with the highest possible honor of the European commission. 

During the project “5th Generation Non-Orthogonal Waveforms for Asynchronous Signaling“ (5GNOW), 5G technologies have been researched from 2012 to 2015. The project, headed by the Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, was financed by the 7th Supporting Program for Research and Technological Development of the European Commission. In addition to Fraunhofer HHI researchers, colleagues from the Technical University of Dresden and from IS-Wireless, CEA LETI and National Instruments in Hungary were involved. Alcatel-Lucent Germany took over the technical management.

When the project began in 2012, 5G was still completely unknown to an audience outside of the subject area. Already at that time however, the researchers assumed that this new generation of mobile networks would play a major role in the realization of visions of the future, such as the Internet of Things or wireless Gigabit connections. The project partners analyzed several wave technologies to advance the development of 5G, for example.

During the project, the results have already been presented at conferences and exhibitions: 5GNOW participated at the IEEE GLOBECOM 2014 in Austin, Texas and the Mobile World Congress 2015 in Barcelona.

In the course of the final project evaluation in Brussels, the European Commission emphasized that the project would have important effects on the pre-standardization of 5G. Naturally, research on the technology components will continue after the end of 5GNOW: The achieved results were taken up by the FANTASTIC-5G project. The EU project started operation on 1st July 2015. Fraunhofer HHI participates again.